


State of Play

by thegrumblingirl



Series: On the Devil's Side [2]
Category: Luther (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Slow Build, sequel to Questions - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2017-11-28 03:01:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/669527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegrumblingirl/pseuds/thegrumblingirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another case. John's last, if he has any say in it; and the beginning of something else. Something new that's always been there, right in front of them.</p><p>Takes off directly after <em>Questions</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Again, for Inkie.

In the morning, they were woken up by the persistent ringing of Ripley’s mobile on the bedside table. Groaning, Justin went to answer.

“Hullo?”

“Ripley, mate, it’s Benny. Thought you might like to know it’s ten in the morning and you are expected back at the factory at some point this afternoon.”

“Ugh… thanks, Benny, appreciate it.”

“Do you want me to call John?”

The arm slung over his waist tightened its hold a little. “N-no, no, it’s fine, I’ll get him.”

“Good man. See you later.”

“Thanks, mate. Bye.”

Ripley let the phone drop to the floor and yawned, dragging his hand over his eyes. Behind him, Luther gave a small grunt of protest.

“It’s ten,” Justin said, turning so he could lie on his back and stretch, John’s hand resting on his stomach. He chanced a look and found that Luther’s eyes were still closed, the crease between his brows a little smaller than before. “John.” Eyes opened and met his, and, just for a second, Justin felt dizzy. “Morning.”

“Morning,” John answered. He hadn’t taken his hand away. “Anything waiting for us?”

“Not yet.”

Luther hummed and closed his eyes again, taking a deep breath; before he rolled over and swung his legs out of bed, sitting up on the edge, stretching his arms over his head. Justin watched the muscles in his back shift underneath the skin. A sudden sensory memory of Luther’s chest pressed against his own back, so vivid he could almost feel it again, demanding, derailed his thoughts. He pushed it away.

Sitting up himself, he picked up his phone again and checked for any other messages. Finding none (except for a text from his sister), he half turned.

"I'll grab a shower and get dressed. D'you want me to drive you 'round to yours to change? We can grab breakfast on the way to the station."

"I'll put the kettle on."

John got dressed, though leaving off the tie, while Ripley showered, then padded into the kitchen, preparing the same tea as last night, but this time actually looking forward to drinking it. He stared out of the window as he did, watching the light shift across the city below; until Justin appeared at his elbow and picked up the second mug. He leaned against the counter, facing Luther, and took a sip. Hid a smile.

Luther turned to look at him and they locked eyes for a minute, something silent passing between them as it often had before and often would again. John took in his clean, neat suit, the vibrant tie, noted how Justin's curly hair was still slightly damp from the shower. John's eyes were warm, and now Ripley didn't hide the quirk of his lips. 

 

  
* 

He went upstairs with Luther when they arrived at his flat. They found Jenny working; laptop balanced on her knees, half a dozen books and about as many magazines spread out on the floor around her.

"You two are up early," she greeted them without looking up from the screen.

"Found anything?" Luther asked while chucking his coat and taking off his shoes in the door, Ripley standing off to the side behind him.

"There's an independent mag, online issue, they want to quiz me tomorrow." She indicated the books with her hand: "Art and fashion history and," she pointed at the magazines, "trends of the past five years. Cheers for well-stocked libraries and photographic memory."

"And then?"

"They'd take me on, trial basis. If I don't screw up for three months, I'm settled." She looked up from her research and when her gaze met Luther's, her expression softened. "And then I'd be out of your hair," she added. Her eyes flickered to Ripley for a moment, as if to include him in that statement, and he fought the urge to check the distance between himself and the DCI, though he knew they weren't standing any closer than usual. (Perhaps it wouldn't make a difference.)

Luther smiled at her and then turned, brushing past Ripley towards the bathroom, calling, "Make yourself at home, Justin," over his shoulder. Justin peeled away from the wall and walked over to the sofa, careful not to disturb the papers.

He'd just sat down when his mobile rang. Quickly glancing at Jenny, he dug into his coat pocket. 'Not another case,' he thought, 'please not another nutter so quickly after this one.' Checking the caller ID, he grimaced. Schenk.

"Ripley."

"Sergeant Ripley, good morning. Don't worry, you're not in for a scolding, I did give you the morning off."

"I know, Benny called us. Called me, I mean. A scolding's actually not what I'm worried about." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jenny's eyebrow rise.

"Then I'm afraid I have to confirm your premonition; the unit has been assigned a new case," came Schenk's voice over the phone, and Ripley closed his eyes. _Damn it_.

"Where?"

"Come to the station first, there's more to this than the initial visit to the crime scene."

Oh wonderful, a high-profile one, with someone from on high breathing down their necks. John's neck.

"We'll be there in half an hour, sir."

"Good, see you then."

"Yes, sir."

He hung up and stared at his phone for a few seconds, unseeing.

"Bad news?"

Jenny was watching him. The question was blunt, but he could see her concern—she knew Luther was toeing the line just as well as he did. Perhaps they were the only ones, now.

"Yeah, sort of. We've got a new case waiting, sounds like a tough one; with a lot of publicity, maybe."

Her eyes widened slightly as she caught what he was implying. "Are they gonna come here and bother him? Us. You. Whatever."

"It's too early to tell, but sometimes they do. Look, I'll give you my number. If anyone approaches you and the boss isn't around, call me. I know your... case is finished, but it's best if no-one asks any questions about you living here, even if it's just the Daily Mail."

He produced one of his cards, scribbled his mobile number on the back, and handed it to her. She mock saluted him, but stuffed it securely into the pocket of her cardigan. "Last thing anyone needs doing their job, reporters blocking their door," she muttered darkly.

"Who's got reporters blocking their door?" Luther appeared in the doorway, knotting his tie, smiling but with his eyes moving between them, a little unease creeping into the broad line of his shoulders. Justin knew that soon they'd be cramped as he hunched over crime scene photos and evidence. And he also knew that it was best to come right out with it.

"The guv called, we've got another case. He's asked us to come in before going to the crime scene, so I'm guessing—"

"High profile, involvement from upstairs," Luther finished the sentence for him, nodding. "A funny one, then. Or closer to home than anyone wants to admit on the phone." He sighed. "Jenny, if they start following me here or whatever, I'll be staying at the station or at a hotel until this is finished. I don't want you in harm's way, and I don't want to fight the higher ranks about my unlikely choice in roommates."

"My place not an option, then?" Ripley cut in.

"I don't want you in harm's way, either." They frowned at each other while Jenny worried her lower lip with her teeth.

 

*

When they arrived in the bullpen of the Serious and Serial Unit, they found that all hell had taken the liberty and pretty much broken loose without them.

There were whiteboards everywhere, some already filled with evidence markers, timelines, photos—and some, to the side, still empty. A dark prognosis, gleaming mockingly in the light that streamed through the blinds.

Schenk met them in the middle of the room.

"Gentlemen. I know you had hoped for a bit of a reprieve after the last case; so did I, but..." He trailed off and handed them each a wad of files. At their questioning looks, he shrugged. "Several seemingly unconnected murders in the last two months. Different MO, different types of victims—ethnicity, age, gender, social background, different everything; except that in all cases, there was no forensic evidence worth a damn. No leads were going anywhere, so they were left to go cold. But then, there was," he indicated for Ripley to open his file, "a letter."

Luther stepped half behind Ripley to look at a copy of the evidence over his shoulder, stooping a little. His breath brushed Justin's neck just as it had done countless times during the night, and the thought was so surreal that Justin had to mentally slap himself to keep from turning around and staring at him. He kept perfectly calm, knowing that Schenk was always aware of anyone's body language when they thought he wasn't, and slowly focussed on the letter and the words being said. He hadn't missed much.

"—sent from somewhere in Chiswick, though God knows that doesn't mean much. Anyway, the letter claims that all these murders were committed by a group of unknown size, calling themselves 'Cipher.' They claim that they are a network of people who have set out to murder as many as they can until one of them gets caught. The 'deal,' as they so graciously put it, is that, if we manage to get one of them, the others will stop."

Luther groaned and, for a moment, curled even closer into Ripley's back, then unfolded himself and stepped away, running his hand over his short hair. "Which will be nearly impossible." He rubbed his hands with a grim smile, then gestured at Justin with his open hand. "Pop quiz, Sergeant Ripley: why's that nearly impossible?"

"Because there are too many variables. It could really be a group, but with so many members that we'll never find a pattern until they've killed dozens of people—or claim to have killed them when they haven't. They could be changing their MOs any time, deliberately swapping methods, and with a lack of forensic evidence, we won't be able to pin anything on them unless they confess. Or, it might be just one killer, leading us on. In any case, we'll end up branching out the investigation into so many distinct lines of enquiry that we'll run ourselves ragged without making any headway correlating information. It could compromise the entire department, if we're not sure whether any case that isn't open-and-shut might not be one of theirs instead of a regular one or a random killing."

"Excellent." Luther clapped a hand on his shoulder, and Ripley tried not to beam. Schenk nodded in approval.

"Well done, Sergeant; a very succinct analysis of the barrel of shit this letter has thrown us into."

Having worked with Martin Schenk for a while now, Justin could distinguish the earnest praise from the biting cynicism at their situation and bit back a laugh.

"Have they specifically named the victims there?" Luther asked, gesturing towards the whiteboards.

"Yes. They gave details that weren't disclosed to the press, so the cases over there are confirmed."

Luther tapped the tips of his fingers against his mouth. "Lending credibility... unless... Was there anything only the murderer could have known that wasn't in the reports, anything that forensics or SOCO couldn't have explained?"

"That, precisely, is the problem," Schenk replied quietly.

Ripley looked between them. "What?"

Luther turned his back on the bullpen and bent his head towards him. "Unless it's an inside job."

"You mean... one of us leaking reports or... collecting information and sending that letter?"

Luther nodded, scrutinising him.

"But... why? For its own sake? What good would that do, except for the chaos?"

"A diversion?"

Ripley remembered false directions and fire drills. A look passed between them.

"That's what we need to eliminate first," Schenk cut in. "Is there anyone on who the paper trail converges? Anyone who's handled several of these files, from despatch that took the call down to the archive. Has anyone requested them who shouldn't have, has anyone handled them who normally wouldn't have; if there's just one piece of the chain out of place, just one anomaly, we have to follow it up."

"And it needs to be done two ways," Ripley added. "The electronic records can be changed," he tried not to break Schenk's unflinching gaze as he said it, "but the paperwork is more difficult to alter without arousing suspicion. So a manual search through the files is necessary as well." When he finished, he saw pride in the curl of Luther's mouth.

"Do you think you're up to it, Ripley?"

"Absolutely, sir."

"Then you know what to do. Proceed with caution."

"Sir," Justin nodded earnestly and carried the files to his desk, clearing it of everything that wasn't pertinent to the new investigation.

Luther followed him with his eyes while Schenk observed the DCI. "Pop quiz, John?"

Tearing his eyes away from Ripley, Luther turned towards his boss. "Can't hurt, can it?"

"Do you want him to be promoted within the unit?"

"If that's possible." Luther wondered whether Schenk was already aware that he was planning on leaving. And if, perhaps, he'd known it before Luther himself had.

"Have you talked about it?"

"In general terms."

"So he doesn't know he's being groomed?"

_No secrets, no agendas_. Well, this was only a half-lie. Luther shrugged. "He'll catch on soon enough." Then, with a nod at Schenk, he went to look at the crime scene photos. He ended up standing in front of them for over an hour, plain clothes officers moving about and around him as if he were a familiar piece of furniture that no-one bumped into anymore.

 

*

"Any joy?" Luther pulled up his chair from the other desk and sat at Ripley's side, his knees bumping against Justin's thigh. He leaned forward, slouching a little, which made Ripley look almost taller by comparison.

"Nothing yet. I cross-referenced all records electronically, there were no anomalies so far. Now, I'm going through all the files themselves to find any incongruences or alterations. I don't get the feelings they were tampered with, though."

Luther nodded. "Trust your instincts. Just..."

"Double-check it," Ripley finished with a small smile.

"I know you will. Now," John got up and grabbed his coat; "I'll go and round up a couple of old friends, see if they've ever heard of 'Cipher.'"

"Old friends?"

"Oh, you know. Serial killers. Nutters."

"Do you think someone's orchestrating this from prison?"

"No, I think that, if it's someone from the outside, whoever's behind this served time with them. Became a fan."

Ripley narrowed his eyes, drawing breath to speak, pausing, thinking, then nearly reeling back when he realised what Luther was saying. "You recognise their work?"

"Some of it. It's... it's never quite the same if it's not the same mind behind it, but there's... it's like a morbid retelling of _The Waste Land_." They turned towards the whiteboards.

"What, because of the allusions and references?"

"Yeah. It's got a body of reference the size of Kent, so do these."

Ripley shot Luther a worried glance. “All yours?”

“What?”

“Did you put all of them away?”

“No, just a few. Most of it I recognise from the literature. I read case files, too, you know, when I was a sergeant.”

A flicker of amusement lightened the tension a bit before Ripley looked at the boards again, clearing his throat.

“This isn’t about me,” Luther added.

“Good.”

Luther absently patted his coat pocket to make sure he had the car keys. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

Ripley nodded and went back to the files on his desk. John left him to it, but before he was quite out of earshot, he heard Justin’s voice, calling after him. “Whose files did you read?”

He turned and walked backwards to the door. “Rose Teller’s,” he called back, smiling crookedly, then disappeared from view.

 

*

Hours later, Justin had compared all the signatures and initials with those in the archive’s records, and was at least 98% sure that this case wasn’t being engineered by someone within the force. When he quietly related this to both Schenk and Luther upon the latter’s return, they were in turn relieved and looked like they dreaded the oncoming investigation even more now.

There wasn’t much they could do for the moment, except to go over all the evidence again, search for connections, anything that other units may have missed.

“You know, I once said that the best place to run an investigation from is here. I’m beginning to resent my past self for opening my stupid mouth,” Luther muttered while he rubbed a hand over his eyes, tired from another few hours of concentrating on crime scene photos and files; just as Ripley reached in front of him and placed a mug of tea right under his nose.

“My professionalism prohibits me from making a comment, sir,” he deadpanned without missing a beat.

“Meaning you agree with me; that’s what I like to hear,” Luther groused and picked up the mug, taking a deep breath.

Justin sat on the chair beside the desk. “Are we sure this isn’t, I dunno… swapsie murders?”

John looked up at him, a touch of amused incredulity in his eyes. “Swapsie murders?”

“Yeah, _Strangers on a Train_. You do mine, I’ll do yours; just on a bigger scale. People with motives, committing ordinary murder for each other, and providing unconnected alibis; then disguising it as a network of psychopaths.”

Luther leaned his head back, closing his eyes. “Thank you for making me hate this thing even more now, Justin.”

Ripley’s quiet professional pride at coming up with a valid theory Luther hadn’t considered yet was tempered by the tired expression in the other man’s eyes when he looked at him again. John caught his concerned look and waved his hand. “It’s just… I shouldn’t even be this tired, but we aren’t officially on the clock, you know? Normally, with these guys, they escalate by the time we get close, by the time we have a real chance of stopping them; and when we manage to make contact, get them talking and they give us a deadline, then it’s just running around until we’ve got them; or at least while we’ve got something to look for.”

(‘By something, he means bodies,’ Ripley thought unwittingly; and found himself reminded of when they’d met on the Henry Madsen case so long ago and the driven look in Luther’s eyes that had drawn him in even then.)

“But like this… like this, we’d have to prevent all murder, everywhere, not just in the areas we suspect are vulnerable. All we can do is go through the paperwork, try to find something others have missed, and try and anticipate the nearly unforeseeable while keeping in mind that we have to build a case that will actually hold up in court.” Luther sighed. “It’d be nice to have time to hunt them down, except this isn’t a hunt, not yet, if it ever becomes one. It’s not even hide and seek, it’s—”

“20 Questions with a donkey,” Schenk interrupted him; and both turned to look at him. “The press have been informed. Now that we can reasonably exclude police involvement or fabrication of a threat, the public need to be made aware of what’s going on. There will be a press conference tomorrow morning at 9.30—I will take over the briefing, along with the Chief Constable, they don’t need to know that you two are on the case just yet; this could turn very ugly very quickly. Nevertheless, they are already camping out outside, so at least you, John, should prepare yourself for a bit of actual hide and seek. They know your face, and they don’t always like it.”

Luther made a face. “Don’t I know it.”

“Actually, that’s what I came here to suggest: go home. Get some rest before this blows up and more potential victims come in. If it does stay quiet for a few days, you’ll have time enough to look at those files again and again anyway.”

“Thanks, Martin.”

Schenk made a shooing gesture at both of them, and they didn’t need to be told twice. 9pm still wasn’t exactly early, but it was earlier than most days.

“Where are you off to, then?” Ripley asked as he shrugged on his coat.

“Let’s see how many there are.”

When they arrived downstairs and could see the sizeable gaggle of journalists outside, they stopped; and before they could be spotted, Luther pulled Ripley behind one of the inner doors by his elbow.

“Listen, I don’t think they’re gonna follow us anywhere tonight, so let’s just split; and you pick me up at mine at 8, yeah?”

Ripley nodded, and then they walked into the barrage of questions and incandescent camera flashes.

 

*

Justin had gone to bed soon after getting home. He’d tried his sister, but the call had gone straight to voicemail; and getting a good night’s sleep was too good to pass up on.

He hadn’t allowed himself to feel like something was missing.

When he woke up in the morning, he actually felt rather well rested. But then, he rolled over and, sprawling out on the bed, caught a scent that wasn’t his own on the other pillow. He burrowed deeper into it for just a moment, taking a deep breath, before abruptly sitting up and shaking his head to clear it.

“That was a bad idea,” he said to himself. Then, he got up.

When he knocked on Luther’s door an hour later, it was Jenny who opened for him.

“Well, you look a sight better than him,” she decided when she got a good look at him, before turning around and walking back into the kitchen.

Confused, he stepped into the flat after her and closed the door. “Where is he?”

“Second door down,” she pointed him in the right direction.

The door to the bedroom was ajar.

“Boss?” he asked, knocking lightly on the frame.

“In here.”

Ripley gave the door a slight push and, stepping into the room, came vis-à-vis with a very tired-looking, possibly exceedingly grumpy DCI Luther.

“Boss?” he asked again.

“Didn’t sleep well,” Luther answered, sitting down to put on his shoes.

“Didn’t sleep at all, you mean,” Jenny corrected him, appearing behind Justin with a mug of tea cradled in her hand.

“If you noticed, that means you weren’t sleeping, either.”

“I was studying for my interview, what’s your excuse?” She disappeared down the hall again before Luther could answer, leaving them alone.

“Are you ok?”

“Just a bad night,” Luther shrugged and pulled his suit jacket from a hanger on the rack in the corner. “Come on, let’s get going.”

“Have you even had breakfast?”

John gave him a look. “It’s funny, you really don’t look anything like my nan, and yet—”

Ripley sighed. “Come on, then.” Before they left, he poked his head into the kitchen. “Do you need a lift into town for your interview?”

“No, I’ll be fine, it’s not for hours yet. But thanks, Sergeant,” Jenny added with a grin, and he smiled.

“Good luck, anyway.”

“Text me when you’re through,” Luther called from the door; and with that, they were out the door, on to another day of either mind-numbing caselessness, or too much chaos to comprehend. No way of telling, really.

 

*

They ended up having the slowest week since the unit had been set up.

There were no murders claimed by Cipher, and none of the crime scenes that were investigated—all SOCO reports and photographs were forwarded to them for inspection—bore any resemblance to the cases they had so far. Beyond that, they were flying blind, being unable to predict what MO would crop up next, but copper’s intuition for the funny ones was something the Serious and Serial Unit possessed in spades.

As a consequence, they actually had decent hours, for once. Luther’s hunch that whoever was the head of Cipher might have served time with some old customers hadn’t paid off yet, but they were nowhere near the end of the list. None of the convicted killers he’d spoken to had given any indication that they knew what he was talking about, but he was sure that, given time, he’d find one who couldn’t bear having their trademarks copied. They did also investigate leads that came up while going over the present cases again and again, going on Ripley’s exchange theory, but nothing so urgent happened that they couldn’t be home by 9.

It was ironic, then, that neither Luther nor Ripley got any decent sleep.

When he showed up at Luther’s flat to pick him up for work, the disapproval on Jenny’s face became more pronounced as the days went on, added to by the fact that Justin had started matching Luther’s haggard expression around the eyes.

Justin knew that it was case-related—something like this had to drive Luther crazy; it drove him crazy, too. And with it came the worry about John.

 

*

John turned on his left. Turned on his right. Lay on his back. Not long now and he’d be desperate enough to start counting sheep.

He couldn’t remember ever being confronted with a case like this, in all his time as a copper. The waiting put him on edge, made him want to go out there and roam the streets, looking for them, intercepting them. Being in the right place at the right time. He definitely wasn’t now.

Maybe they’d get him, instead of some other random victim.

He was halfway out of bed, reaching for his clothes, when he stopped. He couldn’t do that, couldn’t think like that. That wasn’t the deal.

The deal was to keep on living.

He sank back into the mattress and stared at the ceiling he could barely see.

The train in his head never stopped, that was what Zoe had said, so long ago. He wanted to make it stop, but he had missed out on his chance.

He had a deal with a bullet, not with his will to live.

And that was why he had to leave the force. Not because the people around him were vampires, or because he’d done enough, but because his job afforded him too many opportunities to stop the train in his head, to break the deal.

Alice would now argue that it was his will to live that made him honour the deal. She’d tell him about the odds, the skewed figures, about catching only people that made mistakes. She’d tell him that a 1-in-6 chance of dying wasn’t playing fair.

He’d tell her that that was how you played Russian Roulette.

As if he’d ever followed the rules.

He’d never again become the man he’d once been, but if he could just step away and let someone else drink the poison…

He shifted so he was lying on his left side, and the emptiness inside him turned into an emptiness beside him. He’d thought telling Ripley would make it better. Easier, somehow. But then Justin had kept him safe in the dark.

He didn’t want to have to watch him change, too. Not more than he already had.

Justin had seen the change in him, had seen him go from bad to worse. Luther wondered whether he regretted that Justin had never met the him that came before.

He was the big bad wolf, but he made for a sorry excuse for a cautionary tale.

 

*

On Tuesday of the following week, Ripley turned up on Luther’s doorstep with the different kind of news. Jenny waved him in and went back to a stack of cardboard boxes standing in the living room.

“Are you moving already?” he asked, but then he realised that she wasn’t taping the boxes shut, she was opening them.

“What, all of this stuff? It’s not mine, it’s his.”

Justin lingered for a long moment, blinking at the boxes containing Luther’s earthly possessions. He turned away when he noticed the CID seal on some of them.

“Boss?” he lightly knocked on the door and stepped into Luther’s bedroom when the DCI hummed in affirmation. “Boss, we’ve got something.”

“Something what?”

“A body.”

Luther stopped knotting his tie and threw his head back, heaving a sigh. “Finally.”

Ripley threw him a look.

“I know. Where?”

“In a back alley in Soho.”

“Soho? New hunting ground, that is.”

When they got to the scene, it was already crawling with onlookers and press. Luther and Ripley made use of their elbows to fend off the questions and dictaphones thrust at them from all angles.

“DCI Luther, why couldn’t the police prevent this from happening?”

“Chief Inspector, how come you haven’t found at least one of them yet?”

“Sergeant, is this really a conspiracy of serial killers your unit has put away before? Why aren’t the public safe?”

Both of them clenched their teeth, refusing to rise to the bait. As soon as they were past the police tape fencing off the scene, they covertly let out a breath of relief. This wouldn’t get any easier in the coming days, would it.

The victim was a 32-year-old man, Asian, working in the City. His designer suit was shredded and bloodied, his skin marred with acid burns, ugly patterns practically etched into his torso. Next to his head lay the contents of his briefcase and his wallet. Crouching next to him, Luther could barely make out the face of the young man’s girlfriend underneath the blood it was spattered with.

“His name’s Sean Leung, worked for a big publishing house, well-known editor. Girlfriend reported him missing this morning when he didn’t return from a dinner with a client and his family hadn’t heard from him, either.”

“Where does he live? Is Soho even anywhere near his usual route?”

“Islington. He went to dinner with two of his authors and a colleague in the City; there was no reason for him to be in Soho at 11 at night.”

“How long has he been dead?”

“About 4 hours, preliminary assessment.”

“What’s SOCO say?”

“The usual: not much, and they’re not expecting a huge turn-out.”

Luther stood up and took a step back. “This remind you of anything?”

“Graham Shand. The way his possessions are arranged around his head, his briefcase empty; it’s all the same, except he’s not a woman, and, well—”

“Graham Shand is in for life,” Luther finished his sentence. “Perhaps he’ll be more inclined to talk. Let’s go.”

 

*

The day was a crazed mess. The bullpen was swarming with coppers, the phones were ringing non-stop, and all of that although the unit didn’t have one single usable lead. Graham Shand had been singularly unhelpful: he’d laughed at them, and then demanded to be taken back to his cell.

Back at the station, they went through the canvassing reports, the witness statements (which consistent mainly of awkward pauses, because they were no witnesses of the event, just the people who’d found Sean’s body), the victim’s background and personal and work computer again and again, and found a grand total of nothing. No reason for anyone to kill him, no suspicious communications, nothing out of the ordinary that would explain how the Cipher found him, and how he ended up in Soho in the middle of the night.

They were going in circles, and they knew it.

The only hope they had was that, soon, the series would escalate and, whoever they were, would start making mistakes.

Luther threw the file he’d been reading back onto the desk and leaned back in his chair. He was good at this game, he reminded himself. He could find them, he’d always found them so far, he’d been right about all of them. But those had always been killers working alone, or in pairs, or one frightened kid receiving orders; getting a good look inside their brains had been so much easier than it was now. With a collective with no known leader, not even any one known member, how was he supposed to sniff them out? Motivations overlapped, even in homogeneous groups; he had no idea which aspect of which crime he could take into account for one or all of them at a time.

He didn’t know how to find even one of them.

He could discern the differences, could tell where they deviated from the underlying MO of past cases, but was that enough to build a profile? Luther hated that he wasn’t sure.

And he hated that, even though they actually had a victim now, they were still waiting.

Waiting, indeed, were also the journalists outside the station when they left that night.

“They’ll probably follow me rather than you, so just get away as quick as you can. I’m going to a hotel. Can you ring Jenny for me?”

“Yeah, sure. John?”

“What?”

“Try and actually go to a hotel, you know. Sleep, don’t just walk about all night.”

Luther looked ready to wind him up about impersonating his nan again, but then just nodded. “Alright, see you in the morning. I’ll pick you up at yours.”

 

*

Justin went straight to bed. He tossed, and he turned, tried to think up ways to distract himself into sleepiness, and came up empty. The other pillow was slowly starting to smell like him again and no-one else, and he had half a mind to strip the bed, chuck the sheets into the laundry, and be done with it. Except he was too sodding tired to actually move.

He was tired most of the time, just as Luther was, albeit for mostly different reasons, he thought.

Just then, a knock sounded on the door.

He rolled his eyes.


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “A rickshaw?” Luther repeated, as if torn between grabbing the potential lead and reluctance to get his hopes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Luther's back on telly!  
> BugBugs is a real company for pedicabs in London, but, disclaimer: I'm not getting any cookies for mentioning them ;)  
> Obviously, this is now seriously AU from Series 3, but that's fine with me.

Justin got up with a grunt and went to the door. He checked the spyhole out of habit and new weariness, and what he saw made his hand jerk away from the doorknob as if burnt. He took a deep breath, then, and opened the door.

“Boss?”

Luther was leaning against the wall just off the doorway, a duffle bag at his feet. “Can’t sleep.”

So far, so obvious. Ripley took in Luther’s tired expression and crooked smile.

“I can’t, either. C’mon.”

In the end, it was absurdly simple. Justin didn’t think to offer John the sofa, and John didn’t want the sofa, anyway.

“Did you check out of the hotel?”

“No. If anyone tips off the press, they won’t find me there.”

“That’ll help with not making them think you have something to hide,” Justin mumbled sarcastically as he settled back into bed.

In the remaining light, he saw Luther shrug while taking off his shoes. “Just making a point, or so I’ll tell them.”

Justin rubbed at his temple. “Check out tomorrow, yeah? Pissing them off won’t help.”

“I can’t go home.”

“You can come here.”

“Justin—”

“You can say you had to give up your flat to help out a friend and that you’re staying with me until you find something else.”

Luther paused in the middle of unbuttoning his trousers. “Thought about this, have you?” There was half a smirk on his face even though his voice was serious.

“Just thinking quick on me feet, that’s all,” Justin replied in a tone more playful than he felt awake enough for—or than the situation warranted, strictly speaking.

“I don’t know if that’s—”

“You couldn’t sleep, so you came here. Let’s just leave it at that, ok? We’ll sleep fine tonight.”

They left it at that. For now.

 

*

They woke the next morning much the same way they had two weeks before, but this time it was Luther who answered his phone first. Reluctantly, he let go of Justin and rolled away to grab his phone from the nightstand. Halfway to consciousness, Ripley made a sleepy noise and turned on his other side, following John’s movement and warmth.

“Yeah?” John said when he took the call, turning his head to watch Ripley.

“John, it’s Benny. I know it’s not even 6 yet, but you should come in.”

“Has there been another killing?”

“No, but I think I may have found something.”

“We’re on our way.” He hung up and poked Justin in the shoulder with his phone. “Up, sleepyhead.”

“You said, ‘we,’” came the mumbled reply, and Luther wasn’t sure whether that was reproach colouring Justin’s voice, or merely strong denial about the time of day and the necessity to get up.

“And?” Luther watched as Justin opened bleary eyes, blinked at him, and then had the nerve to smirk as he sat up.

“Good to know even you’re not entirely careful with your words at 5 in the morning.”

“Cheeky,” Luther growled, though he knew the amusement showed a mile wide, and shoved Justin’s shoulder before swinging his legs out of bed.

 

*

When they got to the station half an hour later, they were greeted by the dregs of the night shift and Benny Deadhead still slaving over his keyboard.

“Were you here all night again?”

“Something kept niggling at me, and I couldn’t go without following it up.”

Luther nodded and Justin deposited a mug of coffee next to the monitor.

“Cheers, mate,” Benny sighed gratefully and grabbed the mug.

“Finish that coffee and then tell us what you’ve got,” Luther said over his shoulder while he put his jacket over the back of his chair. “Justin?”

“Boss?” Ripley followed John as he walked a few paces away from where Benny was trying valiantly to make the caffeine stick in his veins.

“Schedule another visit with Graham Shand as soon as possible,” Luther said quietly.

“Alright. You really think he’s in on it?”

“I hope he is. If not, we don’t really have anyone to talk to.”

“What d’you think Benny’s got? A face? Papertrail?”

“I’d be happy with a paperclip.”

Justin gave a short laugh, his smile lingering in the corners of his eyes. Luther looked away and caught Benny signalling for them to come back over.

“What’ve you got?”

“There’s no CCTV anywhere, of anything, surrounding the crime scenes, right? There’s nothing electronic or digital that I could track, neither in the forensic evidence left — or, rather, not left — at the scenes; no phone signatures or GPS tracking signals anywhere in the vicinity, right? So, we can’t willy-nilly call up the CCTV footage of all the surrounding areas up to three hours before and after each killing and start digging into people, ‘cause that’s gonna take us nowhere.” Benny paused and looked at them expectantly.

“Or can we?” Luther prompted in hopes that that was what the geek was getting at.

“Not people. But vehicles.”

“Vehicles is the first thing that gets looked at, the techs have been through that.”

“I’m not talking about anything with a license plate.”

“Then what?”

“This.” Benny called up several images on the monitor; Luther and Ripley stepped closer on Benny’s either side and leaned in.

“A rickshaw?”

“I can’t see it anywhere before the killings, but afterwards, it turns up about four to five miles away from the crime scenes, always about an hour later. We’re still computing the data for all the other vehicles in that radius from all the other crime scenes in that time span, so I can’t say for certain yet, but this is definitely one of the few, very few, vehicles that fit the bill at all.”

“A rickshaw?” Luther repeated, as if torn between grabbing the potential lead and reluctance to get his hopes up.

“Trouble is, I don’t know where it goes. They turn up for a few minutes about five miles away and I can track them in the main traffic, but then they turn off somewhere and I lose them again. No visual on the driver’s face or other identifying marks, but judging by the height, movement, and pedaling speed, I’d say it’s a different person on the saddle every time. We don’t know where it’s at home, it goes into a different direction each time. I know, it’s a long shot, but my gut tells me... it’s just a hunch.”

Luther nodded. “I trust your gut, Benny. So, what do we do about this?”

“Rickshaws have to be registered if they’re part of a business, like guided tours for tourists. I looked into the city’s records. Pedicabs don’t have to be registered with the TfL; and there’s an organisation called ‘LPOA,’ London Pedicab Operators Association, but membership is optional. It’s difficult to get an accurate count of active vehicles and drivers, too.”

“So, basically, anyone can drive a pedicab and go anywhere without necessarily being recorded anywhere except when they get a parking ticket? Do you think it’s the same carriage every time?”

“I’m certain. Look at those markings on the back and side of the carriage and axis. It certainly looks the same, of course it could be stolen ones made up to look the same. I’m gonna have a look if there were any pedicabs reported stolen later, and any that were involved in accidents that could have caused those markings.”

“Who’s selling these, anyway?”

“One of the biggest companies who sell pedicabs in London is called BugBugs.”

“Is this going to be enough to get a warrant for their records and customer lists?” Luther asked Ripley over Benny’s head. Justin shot him a look.

“In a five-mile-radius? It’s not conclusive, and we don’t have an exigent situation. But, we can keep an eye out for it. We’ve got something to look for.”

John nodded and clapped his hand on Benny’s shoulder. “That’s more than we could’ve hoped for. You’re a genius, mate, thank you.”

“We haven’t caught them yet,” Benny sighed, but he perked up at the thought of them finally having something.

“We will,” Luther smiled at him, then at Justin, who tilted his head — he knew that look.

“What?” He knew what happened when Luther got like this, he wouldn’t stop looking, wouldn’t stop hunting once he got that air of euphoria about him that wouldn’t abate even after setbacks. After the despondent atmosphere of the past week, this was both good and bad news. Good news for the case, bad news for just about everyone else.

 

*

Four hours later, they were in with Graham Shand.

“It’s just us again, Graham,” Luther said as Shand was escorted into the room. “Frankly, I’m surprised you agreed to see us.”

“Well, if I hadn’t, they’d have dragged me here, kicking and screaming, anyway. Why give them the satisfaction?” Graham Shand’s face was different from how Justin remembered it at the arrest. He was slimmer overall, and the manic look the Sergeant remembered had been replaced with the dark resignation of someone in for life and pretty far down the prison food chain. Luther, who hadn’t been at the arrest site because of the Madsen situation, had asked him about it the week before, and now Ripley tried to spot more differences, a way in. Anything to get Shand to talk. His wife had nearly killed him with a hammer as they were taking him away, and Ripley knew that, ever since then, Shand had been experiencing lapses of memory, loss of time, the occasional seizure. For that reason, he would never be placed in solitary, but finding a cellmate who would reliably call for help when something happened was difficult enough when the patient wasn’t an inmate locked up for fetish killings involving women’s handbags.

“What do you want this time?”

“It was your MO, and they took it. They chose it to stage the murder of a man, though, not a woman. I think they’re mocking you and your... manbag.”

Shand’s face and his neck muscles twitched involuntarily. Ripley knew that they did that, since the hammer. “Yesterday, you accused me of being part of it, of telling them to do it the way I did it.”

“Changed my mind. ‘cause, why would they... commemorate you? That would imply that they look up to you and, let’s face it, no-one does, not even the other low-life nutters in here. You don’t tell anyone to do anything. You’re involved, but you’re not part of it.”

“This ‘Cipher’ must really scare you.” Now, a sick little smile appeared on Shand’s face. “Can you feel the fear?”

Luther smiled right back. “Keep it in your pants, Graham, I’m not your type.”

“No, you’re right. But that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy myself.”

“Are you still going to enjoy yourself when I tell you that we found traces of Viagra in the victim’s suit pocket? Analysis only came through this morning. You were impotent for a good long while, weren’t you? ‘s why your wife looked for what she needed somewhere else, wasn’t it?”

Something in Shand’s expression twisted and Ripley chanced a quick sideways glance at Luther, who was the picture of calm next to him.

“Couldn’t get it up for ages, not until you started killing again. But even then... sex wasn’t particularly good, was it? Well, not for her, anyway. She didn’t say in the interview, but I guess it takes time to dry a soggy biscuit with a fan,” Luther added with a laugh.

“Where is she?” Shand asked with an ugly rasp to his voice.

“We’re not gonna tell you that. What, did they promise they would? If you told them how you did it? Heard anything? Did you know that they didn’t just use your MO, but someone else’s, too? They did a mash-up... acid burns, nasty business.”

Once they’d stepped outside the prison gates, Ripley turned to Luther. “You were always planning on going to see him twice, weren’t you?” At Luther’s questioning glance, Ripley continued. “There was no Viagra in the victim’s pockets, you were goading him. First, you gave him a higher standing, you gave him respect by accusing him of being at the centre of it. And then you took it away.”

Luther grinned. “Did I? Huh.”

 

*

Schenk was waiting for them at the station. “What did Shand tell you?”

“Not a whole lot — he still hates us more than them; so he wants them to sweat a bit and see us flounder. He let us ask five questions,” Luther began.

“And what kind of answers did you get?”

“Shand was approached by an inmate called Deryl, didn’t say when — we checked, there’s been no-one with that name in that prison within the last ten years. “Deryl” told him about Cipher and promised him information about his ex-wife and a... bump in respectability if he told them exactly how he killed his victims. The physical description he gave us matches about 60% of the inmates at any given time, so good luck with that. He said that he never saw “Deryl” again, so he must have been released soon after, then, that’s something. Outside of prison, their communication includes nothing digital, no emails, no texts, not even phone calls, just letters. Untraceable. That’s all we got from him.”

“No other names, locations? Letters to and from prison during that time?”

Luther shook his head. “No, nothing else. We’re gonna check letters that went in and out, but if Deryl was released soon after, he was probably sent to collect the information and keep it in his head until he got out,” Luther added while Ripley stood next to him and went over his notes again.

“Boss?”

“Found something?” Luther crowded into Ripley’s space and peered at his notepad from the side.

“I’m not sure. He said something about... remember that bar he mentioned, when he said, ‘It’s not like you’re going to the Riva and they’re handing you champagne’? I might be mistaken, but I think the Riva opened well after Shand was arrested. It’s a bit posh, too, I don’t think any of the inmates in Shand’s block would have gone there.”

Luther raised an eyebrow at him. “Then how do you know about it?”

Ripley shot him a look. “I know you were never young, that’s why I keep my eyes open for the both of us.”

John grinned at him and turned back towards Schenk for a moment, who was watching them with barely disguised amusement. ( _That’s better than disapproval_ , Ripley thought to himself.)

“So, you think that it would do us some good to check them out?”

Ripley frowned. “They probably know our faces, you mean going there ourselves..?”

Luther shrugged. “I want to see it for myself, and surveillance from the outside takes time to set up in that area. We’ll figure something out. You in?”

“‘course.”

“Very good, gentlemen. I say we follow up the leads you have brought us in the remaining time, and then this evening you two clean up and go out for dinner.” Justin secretly worried about the mischievous tone in Schenk’s voice, but pushed the thought aside. “Really, good work,” Schenk continued. He turned his shrewd look on Luther. “Going twice always pays, doesn’t it?” Luther smiled and nodded. Schenk barked a laugh and moved past them towards his office.

“C’mon,” Luther bumped his elbow against Ripley’s. “Let’s tell Benny what we have and make some phone calls.”

 

*

They met up a few blocks away from the restaurant.

“Looking good, Sergeant Ripley,” Luther called as Justin approached. Ripley looked down at himself and shrugged.

“You could look worse yourself, DCI Luther,” he shot back with a grin. Luther nodded in approval. “Right, how are we going to play this?” Ripley asked.

“We can’t go in there with our badges, so we’ll go as civilians, for a treat. Somewhere we won’t necessarily run into people from work.”

“Unless the Chief Con decides to take his wife out for their anniversary tonight.”

“Naah, the place is too hip for him.”

Ripley glared at Luther. “How would you know?”

“I’m not the only one who keeps his eyes open.” At Ripley’s disbelieving look, he laughed. “Alright, Alice recommended it to me before she left.” Justin couldn’t help his own laugh that burst out of him at that. “So I reckon it’s a nice place to go for dinner.”

“Are we?”

“What?”

“Going for dinner.”

“Aren’t we?”

“John,” Ripley warned Luther away from being too much of a prat about this. “I remember what Schenk said, but dinner’s a bit... much, isn’t it? It’s got a bar.”

“Yeah, but if that’s what we wanted, we could just go out somewhere more downscale for a pint, instead of going out to a relatively flashy new place like this. Mates go out for dinner.”

“We still work together,” Ripley reminded him.

“If they know enough about me, they’ll know I’m leaving soon.”

“What happened to lying low? If a journalist sees us and twists it into a date... the Chief Con won’t be happy.”

Luther thought for a moment. “If the press gets it and start the rumour mill, we can make it into a cover. We can make it necessary, because it is.” Luther held Ripley’s gaze for long seconds after that. Justin swallowed convulsively, then nodded in understanding.

“If there’s media attention, Cipher will think we’re distracted.”

“Yeah. It’s not what I want, Justin, I’d rather we just... have a good night and get some information while we’re at it, but it’s a plan. I don’t like it, for your sake, but at least it’s the case, not just me being selfish.”

“Don’t start that again.”

“I won’t, just... When the time comes, would you do to your DS what I did to you?”

“Well, I certainly won’t go on a date with them,” Ripley deflected the question the only way he knew how. Luther smiled.

“I don’t deserve you, dear.” With that, he started walking towards the restaurant.

“And don’t you forget it, luv,” Ripley replied with just enough exasperation in his voice to alleviate some of Luther’s worries as he fell into step with him. For a moment, he was able to push it aside, but then —

“It doesn’t have to be mates going out, or a cover if things get complicated,” he stopped Ripley with his hand shifting to his elbow.

“What?”

“It doesn’t have to be us going out, it can be... a grooming dinner.”

“A what?” Justin was feeling terribly eloquent just that second, but he couldn’t help it.

“I’m leaving soon, I want you to take over the unit when I do, as DI. That can be what this is.”

Justin just blinked at him, but then something slotted into place. “The pop quiz.”

Luther averted his eyes and nodded. “I want you to take over.” His gaze returned to Ripley’s. “I was gonna talk to you about it... might as well make it official.”

“Does Schenk know?”

“He knew before I did.”

“And when were you planning on telling me?”

“After this case. Soon.”

Ripley sighed. “Whichever works best.”


	3. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dinner and a lot of questions. Unanswered.

_It’s funny_ , Ripley thought. For nearly two weeks, the worry about Luther and the shift in their relationship had always lurked at the back of his mind. He’d even had to remind himself to breathe sometimes when Luther had come close, reminded of that first night. It had got easier when he reminded himself that they’d always been that close, physically, but his pillows had smelt like John, and that had seemed impossible to ignore. But then, Luther had turned up on his doorstep in the middle of the night, and something had settled within him. He’d asked John to leave it, just go with it — they had to, because they had a live case and active leads. He’d known that Luther would go into hunting mode, so he did, too; forced himself to push everything else aside.

It was still there, he knew, but he didn’t dwell on it, not even when he woke in John’s arms for the second time. Not even when they had tea and breakfast in his kitchen again, brushing past each other, not even when he felt him nearly pressed against his side as he went over his notes on the Shand interview, Luther's breath ghosting across Justin’s cheek. He registered the touch, but it was as though he were watching himself from the outside. Feeling, acknowledging what it did to him wasn’t part of the deal, as strange as it felt; as if the voice reading things in his head had suddenly changed. That first night and morning felt like light years away, a liminal space in which nothing had to be hidden away. But then Cipher had come and swept them along, and Justin had resigned himself to losing that feeling forever.

And then Luther had come back, back to him. And now, for the duration of the case, Justin hoped he would be able to pretend that that wasn’t a reason to feel a strange warmth rush up inside every time Luther’s arm brushed his as they were walking to the bar.

They walked right into the Riva, without dawdling or trying to get a look in from the outside. This meant that they had to get a quick look around as surreptitiously as possible as they entered and let the hostess lead them to a table — for three.

“Boss?” Ripley asked as they sat down and accepted the menus.

“You’ll see.”

“Should we wait?”

“Nah, he told us to go ahead.”

Justin nodded and perused the menu. Maybe two minutes later, Luther’s phone buzzed. Glancing about him as if expecting the other patrons’ disapproval, he picked up. “Boss? Did you get my text? We’re at the restaurant. I haven’t told him what it’s about yet. … Alright. … Yeah, sure, I can do that. … Alright, well, my best to your family. … See you tomorrow, Martin.” Luther hung up and shrugged his shoulders at Ripley.

“Boss called, he can’t make it. You’ll just have to hear it from me,” he smiled, a little grimly, and Justin didn’t have to do much acting to feel anxious about the news, even if he’d already heard it once. A waiter approached to take their orders, and Luther said loudly enough for anyone curious to hear, “Sorry about this, but our third party just called and cancelled on us. If you need this table later, we’d be happy to move to a smaller one a little out of the way. Over there by the window, maybe?”

The waiter seemed relieved that they didn’t mind to bustle about to free the table, so half a minute later, they were situated in a section of the restaurant with an excellent view of the door and the bar, respectively, as well as most of the other tables. After they’d given their orders, Luther nodded imperceptibly and Justin cleared his throat.

“Boss? Why are we here? What did you and the DSU want to tell me that you couldn’t tell me at the station?”

Luther steepled his fingers on the table before him and stared right at Ripley. “Tradition, mostly. If any of us had partners to go out with, we’d have made this a proper dinner with spouses and big news, but, well, there’s just me and Schenk and you, but... we still wanted to give it an atmosphere, ‘cause this is important. First thing you should know is, I’m leaving soon.”

“What, the unit?”

“Not just the unit, the force. I wanted to stay as long as I needed to get you back on track, you know that already. But what I haven’t told you is that I want you to take over the unit in my place. You can take your Inspector’s exams within a year, and when I leave, you can get my job. How’s that sound?”

Despite already having heard it straight from Luther’s mouth, Justin still felt as though he’d been slapped in the face with a dead fish. He blinked at Luther for a few seconds before remembering that he had a part to play — except this  _was_  real.

“You want to promote me within the division?”

“It’s the logical option, and the right direction for you. Up.”

Justin leaned back in his chair. “D’you think they’ll let me? When... I was bumped back to uniform, they told me I shouldn’t even think about anything further than Detective Sergeant.”

“They thought you were gonna throw your towel, give up. You didn’t. They can’t hold you back.”

“And Erin?”

“You did what you did, but... you cleaned up the mess.”

“I didn’t, not really.”

“She left. That’s all anyone needs to know.”

Justin sighed and looked towards the window for a moment, observing the other tables through the reflection. A few faces were turned in their direction, but no-one he recognised.

“So, what do you say?” Luther asked with a challenging look.

Justin turned back towards him. “I want it.”

John grinned. “Good. Very good.”

Ripley grinned back involuntarily and huffed a laugh. “I never thought... are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Ripley shook his head. “You could have left me there, in booking, in uniform, and I’d have done it, I’d have been fine, no questions asked. Instead, you came to find me. Why? Why did you have to come find me?”

Just for a moment, Luther’s eyes held that soft expression they’d had that first morning in Ripley’s kitchen, watching the city wake up. Against his will, his breath caught before he could shove the memory aside. “I didn’t do right by you and you saved my life. I’m not gonna let that happen again. You deserve this job, and you’re gonna get it.”

“My nan always said not to make promises you can’t keep.”

“So did mine. D’you have to keep bringing her up?”

They shared a smile, and then Ripley watched as Luther’s eyes shuttered over again. “The next Inspector’s exams are in seven months. That’s enough time for you to study and then hit the ball out of the park. I’ll teach you what I know, though you’ve got most of it down already, and Schenk will stay on for a while longer, too. You’re ready for this, and you’re not alone. You’re not gonna make the mistakes I made.”

Justin was about to protest when the waiter arrived with their food, putting their conversation on hold for the time being.

They talked about other things while they ate: Arsenal’s match against Manchester United that weekend, the new Bowie album and the exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum, and, curiously, a friend of Luther’s who was currently travelling the world starting with all the ‘M’s. Their light conversation provided a good cover for their efforts to keep an eye on the other guests and the staff. About twenty minutes into their meal, Luther, who had eyes on the door, nudged Justin’s foot with his own under the table.

“Incoming.”

“What kind?”

“Up.”

Ripley nodded slowly, as if merely agreeing with something Luther had said, but really wondering who it could be that the DCI had pegged for someone from the higher ranks of Cipher. He took another look out the window as it started to rain rather heavily, following the man’s progress to an already occupied table across the room from them. He squinted a little before looking away. He knew that bloke from somewhere.

They continued talking well after they had finished their food, keeping a weather eye on the perimeter all the while, storing tidbits of information away for later inspection. They had been at the restaurant for about one and a half hours when Luther suggested dessert and Ripley nearly choked on his water. Over pumpkin pie and coffee, they discussed a possible timeline for Ripley’s exams and Luther’s resignation, and who might be brought in to complete the team.

“DS Turner,” Luther suggested.

“From Robbery?”

“Yeah, she’s too good for them.”

Ripley nodded. “True. Who else... Matheson? From Homicide?”

“Good idea. See! You’re already building your own unit.”

Ripley took in the bright grin on Luther’s face and felt a pang that felt a lot like regret. “It won’t be the same without you.”

Luther’s expression faltered a little, and Ripley cursed himself for saying anything. Luther shrugged and took another bite. They split the bill.

After dessert, they’d lingered for a bit, but both were aware that job dinners like that didn’t take longer than a mediocre date, so after two hours, they both felt they’d best be on their way. They walked back to the parking lot together, both picking their brains about what they'd noticed and Justin scribbling everything down as they walked. They eventually ended up standing next to their cars, unlocking the doors, when Justin had enough.

“Where are you off to?” (His stomach was doing back-flips, but he wouldn’t mention that again.)

“I’ve checked out of the hotel, so...” Luther trailed off. Ripley nodded and concentrated on getting his car to cooperate. The pause stretched around them, beyond them, until Justin could hear the thud of a palm against metal. “Mine’s closer.” His head whipped up, far too quickly, his eyes far too wide. Luther smiled crookedly and then shook his head. “Don’t wanna be alone. Do you?”

“No.”

“Then let’s go. See you there.”

*

When Justin arrived, John was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs to the apartment building he and Jenny had moved to a short while after her case was closed. “No-one around?” he asked. Luther shook his head; they hadn’t been followed. He unlocked the front door and let them in. “What about Jenny?”

“She won’t mind.” Justin didn’t bother trying to read his expression from the side.

It wasn’t gone eleven yet, so they didn’t try to be stealthy. Jenny was still up, watching telly in the living room, but she muted it when she saw that Ripley had come along.

“'lo. Nice dinner?”

“It was tasty,” Luther said as he shrugged out of his suit jacket and threw it over the back of a chair. Then, he disappeared into the kitchen. Jenny patted the spot on the sofa next to her and Ripley, who’d been hovering in the doorway, gratefully made his way over.

“How’d you take the news?”

Justin glanced at her, wondering why he was surprised. “He told me twice, first for real and then as part of the cover. Didn’t get any less weird the second time.”

Jenny smiled and leaned into the cushions. “Can’t think of him as anything else than a copper.”

“D’you think he can?”

“That’s the million dollar question.” They sat for a minute, watching Luther make tea for the three of them.

“How’s the internship going?” Ripley asked just as the water boiled.

“It’s like leading a normal life.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“After the shit I’ve seen?” Jenny turned towards him and gave him a look. He knew what she was asking and nodded. “Best damn feeling in the world.” Luther wandered back in, juggling their mugs. Accepting hers, Jenny continued, “Wouldn’t you know, I met my careers officer from secondary school this morning while I was out with Kyle, my boss, to get some headshots done. Right tosser, that guy, but I thought, be polite and whatnot. So he comes up to me as he recognises me, asks how I’ve been doing, and when I told him that I’m working for a magazine and, hello, this is my boss, displeased to meet you, he said, ‘Well, I’m glad that your mother has finally made the right choices for you.’ My mother!” Jenny exclaimed sarcastically. Judging by what John had told him about Jenny’s mother, that statement couldn’t have been more wrong. Luther leaned back in the armchair he'd fallen into and dragged his hand over his eyes, sighed.

“So I told him that, one, I make my own choices, fuck you very much, and two, that it wasn’t my mother who finally gave a shit about me, but the copper who put away my dad for murder; and that maybe it’d do him some good to think about doing more for the students who come to him for help than making them fill out a form and telling them they’re too stupid to get what they want, anyway.” Jenny took a deep breath. “I didn’t tell him about the nail through your hand, though.”

Luther chuckled. "I'm glad you have your priorities sorted."

Jenny shrugged. "He was in a bit of a hurry to get away from me after that, though."

"Can't blame him."

"Oi, you came back for me!"

"Reluctantly," Luther was only half-teasing, which Jenny knew, so he received a swat on the arm for his trouble.

"I bet he wasn't such a tit to you," Jenny poked Ripley in the side with her elbow, and he didn't know what to tell her.

"He's my mate, kid. Saved my life. I was glad to have him back. Though he did look a bit out of it."

"My good uniform had got vomited on," Justin supplied, just as a general reminder, before taking a few sips of his tea to distract himself from the thought.

Jenny snorted and shook her head. "You two really need to get with the programme. Anyway, what I've been trying to tell you for two days except you were too busy flapping about chasing crazy people: I found a flat near work. I can move in next week."

"No funny business?"

"No funny business, landlady's a sweet old bird."

"Good. Need help moving?"

"What, with my two bags and one box? You just want to get a good look 'round and scare all the neighbours with your warrant card."

"And what's wrong with that? Justin could come, too. We carry the bags, you carry the box."

"You're hopeless."

"Sergeant?"

"Moving's no fun without company."

Jenny whipped around to face him. "Traitor!"

"If I'm there, I can keep an eye on his warrant card."

Jenny was not convinced. "You're hopeless, too." She finished her tea, gathered a few magazines she'd been reading from the coffee table and got up, squeezing past Luther's legs. "Night night, tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum." She turned to Justin. "Make sure he sleeps, I can't take his grumpy face in the morning anymore." With that, she disappeared down the hall.

Justin blinked. Before he could say anything, Luther sat up straight and put down his mug. "Best do as she says." A smile was tugging at the corners of his mouth, so Justin thought it best not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Apart from the fact that this was Luther's bedroom and not Justin's, and there was someone else sleeping one door down the hall, they'd been quick to establish a routine. They stripped down to their pants in silence, Luther on the left, Justin on the right side of the bed. A tad faster, Ripley got under the covers first, and that was where routine took a hit centre mass: John's scent was everywhere, wrapping itself around him along with the blanket. He didn't have lot of time to think about it, though, before Luther slid in next to him and threw his arm around Justin.

"What am I, your teddy bear?" he asked quietly, addressing mainly Luther's shoulder.

"Among other things," John replied without hesitation and tightened his hold, his breath vaguely tickling Justin's ear. Just then, they were back in that space, where they still didn't talk about what they were doing, but just did it, because it felt right; and Justin knew he would have to stop thinking about that again come morning. For now, he just remained cocooned in Luther's warmth, wrapping a hand around his arm to keep himself anchored.

*

The next morning, they weren’t woken with a phone call, but by Luther’s alarm. During the night, they had shifted until Justin was lying snug against John’s side, using his broad chest as a pillow, John’s arm around his shoulders. Luther stretched to turn off the alarm, then allowed himself to settle back into his pillow. He closed his eyes and just breathed for a moment, until he caught himself slowly rubbing his hand up and down Ripley’s back. His eyes snapped open and he moved his hand away, but then dropped it back down when Justin stirred awake.

That night two weeks ago wasn’t supposed to happen — they (mostly) behaved as they always had, but everything had changed. He wasn’t supposed to give in to the need to be close to Justin, not this close. That night, he’d been tired and drained and Justin’s persistence had forced him to be honest, much too honest. He’d worked his way through to him, refusing to let go. John, watching as the other man opened his eyes and tried to blink away the sleepiness, acknowledged a very simple truth. Justin was the reason Luther was still there and, now more than ever, Luther was too selfish to step away. But he knew that the day would come when he wouldn’t have a choice, for Justin’s sake. He could only hope it wouldn’t come too soon.

“Morning.”

“Morning.”

Luther showered first. When he padded into the kitchen, Jenny was already there, making tea.

“Good thing I’m moving soon,” she said by way of a greeting. “Bathroom’s a bit crowded with three working adults.”

“Listen, Jenny, it’s not —”

“John, don’t,” Jenny interrupted him, not unkindly. “Don’t say what it is or isn’t, ‘cause you have no way of knowing that the way you two are dancing around each other.”

Luther sighed. “I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t want to destroy his career for good. And I have a feeling I can’t have both.”

Jenny’s reply was cut off by the insistent ringing of her phone. “That’ll be work, Jody is picking me up. We’re not done yet,” she reminded John as she grabbed a slice of toast and left. Luther stayed standing at the counter, uselessly staring at the table top until Justin came in, dressed in the previous day’s suit.

“We’re gonna have to go ‘round mine so I can change.”

“Alright.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, that was a bit of an interlude, we'll be diving deeper into the case in the next chapter. I just wanted to give John and Ripley the space they needed to sort a few things out. (Using the phrase 'sort things out' very loosely, here.)


	4. Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Four homicides and an idea.

The drive, first to Justin’s flat and then to the station, was quiet; the silence only broken by Justin reading aloud the autopsy report on Sean Leung that Benny had sent him via email. Arriving at the station, they were greeted by a flurry of activity, everyone running around in circles, setting up new white boards. Justin’s stomach turned.

“How many?” was all Luther asked Schenk as they met him in the middle of the bullpen.

“Four, called in at just about the same time fifteen minutes ago. Units are on their way to secure the crime scenes. SOCO is going to have one hell of a job spreading themselves thin today.” Schenk had just finished speaking when his mobile started to ring, still in his hand. With a sigh, he walked towards his office, away from the clamour of the pen, to accept the call.

John shifted, settling his hands on his hips as he watched the set-up, his elbow bumping into Ripley’s side. He thought for a moment before nudging Justin again, deliberately.

“Boss?”

“This is going to be a long day. Start your research on the guy we saw at the restaurant last night, see if you can dig anything up. We can’t lose sight of him over all this.”

“Alright. Are you going to want to see all the crime scenes for yourself?”

“I don’t know.”

Ripley regarded him from the side, tilting his head. “See too little, see too much?”

Luther nodded. “There are too many details, seeing the big picture… might actually become too big.”

“But you’re not going to sit around in here, waiting for the reports, either.”

“No, I’m not,” Luther replied, absentmindedly running his hand over his beard. “I’m going to go talk to someone I should have talked to a week ago.”

“And who’s that?”

“The press.”

“What?” Justin’s eyes were wide as he stared at Luther. Before he could get another word out, the DCI was already moving again. “John, wait.”

Luther stopped and turned, his brows drawn together in expectation of Justin’s objections. “The guv wants us to keep a low profile, for now, and I agree with him.”

The corners of John’s mouth tilted up in a smirk. “You sound as though you already know what I’m going to say.”

“Don’t I?” Justin challenged him quietly and stepped closer, unwilling to attract their colleagues’ attention. “Because I’m not gonna let you pull a stunt like with the Owen Lynch case again. You said this wasn’t happening to get to you, so don’t let them.”

“Justin, they know we’re working this case.”

“Yeah, but so far we haven’t really done anything to piss them off. If you do whatever it is you have in mind to do now, they’re going to zero in on you and try to hurt you, just you, and we both know what that’s gonna do to your head. I’m not going to stand by and let that happen.” Ripley stubbornly held Luther’s gaze as he let the words sink in.

“So what are you gonna do?” Luther’s words held a challenge, his tone an edge that raised the hackles on Ripley’s neck. He straightened his shoulders.

“I’m coming with you.”

They left the station ten minutes later.

“I am now joined by Detective Chief Inspector John Luther and his colleague Detective Sergeant Ripley of the Metropolitan Police, Serious and Serial Unit. They are here to inform the public about the mysterious Cipher murders that have shocked the country. Chief Inspector, is it true that, this morning, four more murders have been claimed by Cipher?”

“I’m afraid we can’t comment on the on-going investigation as such, Jackie,” Luther replied uncharacteristically smoothly, and Justin had to suppress a tiny smile next to him even as he strained to keep a hold on his nerves — he’d never been on television before. “We are looking into the four deaths reported this morning, and our findings will either connect these killings to the group calling themselves Cipher, or they won’t. Since there have been no further communications beyond the letter that multiple news outlets received a copy of, we cannot be entirely sure which body will eventually be claimed by Cipher.”

“But you have connected other recent deaths to that group’s activities, correct?”

Justin felt Luther shift his weight from one foot to the other and, taking that as his cue, jumped in. “As Chief Inspector Luther said, we can’t really comment on the investigation as it is progressing in our incident room. All that we can say is that we are treating each potential murder as a candidate unless other factors and motives suggest otherwise.”

“What exactly are those other factors, Sergeant Ripley?”

He swallowed to calm himself. Stick to the script, he reminded himself. “Most murders, statistically, are committed by people from the direct social environment of the victim. If someone from the family or workplace of any victim appears to have strong motive as well as means and opportunity, obviously we would hand the case off to the Homicide unit to be treated as a distinct case.”

“And what if that means that a murder actually committed by Cipher ends up in the wrong hands?”

“We believe that that might be one of Cipher’s aims, certainly; they’re trying to force us to spread ourselves thin. So we are partly relying on whether they lay claim to any killings, but not entirely. Again, statistics show us that, while murders may be premeditated, mentally unstable or psychopathic killers murder differently.”

“So what’s to help you telling them apart?”

Ripley shrugged. Luther, without missing a beat, responded to the question himself: “Copper’s instinct.” This pulled the reporter and camera’s attention back to John, and Justin allowed himself a small exhalation of relief.

“What does your instinct tell you about Cipher, Chief Inspector? What do you think the public should be aware of, and how can they protect themselves?”

“You see, Jackie, the thing about random psychopaths — about nutters,” Luther let the word hang there for a moment, probably already enjoying the mild media outrage that would surely follow them around after that, Justin suspected, “is that they might be everywhere. In the supermarket, at the club you just walked out of. Searching for a single serial killer might be made feasible by identifying a pattern. With a bunch of them gathered in what they call Cipher, there’s no reliable way of telling. We have, so far, a wide range of victims with entirely different histories and backgrounds. We can’t really point and say, that group of people is targeted particularly often, they shouldn’t go out at night. We can’t sanction a curfew. Londoners would laugh at us. We can only ask citizens to be careful, to be sensible about where they’re going and with whom.”

“Experts and psychologists have speculated, over the past two weeks, about the makeup of the group and their motivations. Are you following those discussions at all?”

“We have those discussions in the incident room every day, I’m sure we’ve been through it ahead of experts and psychologists,” Luther smiled as though not to offend, when what coppers who caught those cookie jar psychology sessions on television really did was roll their eyes and flip off the screen. “As ever, giving these people media attention and publicity is a difficult thing, and I can’t honestly say we’re always happy with what’s being said, though of course we recognise the public’s need for information and participation.”

“What do you make of Cipher’s dedication to using patterns and methods of killing that have been used by other serial killers before them?”

“When I first took a look at the crime scene photos and incident reports, I mentioned to Sergeant Ripley that it reminded me of T.S. Eliot’s _The Wasteland_ ,” Luther responded, and Justin tensed at the change in his tone. “There’s an artistry in it — they see art in murder, and they’re referencing their favourite artists that have come before them. They’re reproducing exactly what they’ve seen somewhere else. Some might call that plagiarism, but there’s nothing wrong with paying hommage.”

Jackie smiled a little uneasily. “It sounds as though you have an eye for art yourself, Chief Inspector.”

“I know dedication when I see it.”

“Do you… admire these people?”

“Don’t get me wrong, they’re psychotic killers and I want them behind bars. But the criminal mind, on this level, is a fascinating field of study.”

The interviewer’s smile only relaxed as she thanked them for their time and announced the next news topic.

*

“Benny, where are you on the rickshaw thing? Any new sightings from last night and this morning?”

“Still looking, sorry.”

“Just keep at it.” Luther draped his coat over his chair while Ripley stood a few paces behind him, leafing through the wad of files he had received from the desk sergeant as they’d come in. John turned towards the new whiteboards, now filled with pictures of the new victims and details about their lives, possible connections, reconstructions of their timelines and activities before being violently killed.

“Hit me.”

They started with the board labelled ‘TOD 1-2am.’

“First victim’s Christie Langley, 34, the third black victim we have so far, but there’s still no pattern there that we can see. She worked as a secondary school teacher for Biology and Chemistry. Had a boyfriend, Timothy, but no kids, parents died five years ago in an accident, they lived together in Brixton. Interviews are being conducted among their closest friends and her colleagues and her students at the school. The officers there checked in earlier and reported that she was well respected and liked both among the students and the staff, no quarrels that anyone knew of. Her throat was slit, her abdomen stabbed thirteen times. Post mortem, her hands were bound together, then her head was shaven bald. Her hair’s missing from the scene.”

“Is that the first trophy they’ve taken?”

“Uh… no,” Ripley responded after a few seconds. He brushed past Luther, stepping towards one of the first boards put up at the back of the room. “Here, they took Adam Baker’s kidneys and… Maria Marcello’s right index finger.” Luther nodded slowly, then gestured for Justin to continue. “Christie was found in Camden Market, in a back alley, at five o’clock this morning. No eye witnesses. Preliminary autopsy report puts her time of death at about one to two am.”

“Who found her?”

“Street vendor looking for a place to take a leak.”

“Anything else?”

“Not yet.”

“Alright. Next.”

“Marcus Lancaster, 58, IC1, mechanic. Lived with his wife, Sylvia, and two teenage kids in Peckham. He worked at a garage five minutes from his house, but he was found in Croydon. Interviews with his co-workers have already been conducted, they said he was a nice bloke who liked his work and always had a friendly word for everyone. His family’s being taken care of. He was strangled with a rope, then hung from a high fence. His shoes were removed and his feet mutilated. Toes were cut off, dropped to the ground, the soles of his feet were slashed with a razor, so badly there’s hardly any skin left.”

“What was used to cut off the toes?”

“Bolt cutter, Forensics is thinking.”

“All of them?”

“Both big toes, fourth toe of the right and middle toe of the left foot.”

The board was marked ‘TOD 2-3am.’ He nodded towards the heading. “Is that going to continue in the pattern I think it will?”

“Yep.”

“Ok.”

“Next victim’s legal name was Kyle Marks, 24 years old, IC1, transitioning from male to female. Had the paperwork in to change her name from Kyle to Kaylee. She started hormone therapy about half a year ago, plastic surgeries were already scheduled. We’ve got people talking to her friends, her family, her colleagues, her doctors and her therapist, as far as we can reach them yet. No reports back so far. She lived in Chiswick with her cousin, Emma, and she was working as a clerk at a bookstore downtown. She was bludgeoned to death with a blunt instrument so that her facial features are nearly unrecognisable, and then her, um… her male genitals were sliced off with a butcher’s knife and forced into her hand just as rigor mortis set in. The pathologist nearly had to break her fingers to remove them. Time of death between three and four o’clock.”

“Anything done to her chest?”

“No, nothing.”

“They might not even have realised...” Luther trailed off as he let his eyes roam over the details of her last known whereabouts. “Where was she found?”

“Hammersmith, dumped at a construction site. The workers found her when their shift started.”

“What are they building?”

“Er… offices, mostly, for start-ups and software firms.”

“Alright. Last one.”

“Jennifer McCoy, 17, IC1, from Yorkshire. Oxford student, seemed to be in London for a night out with her friends. They lost sight of her at some point, around one, tried calling her dozens of times, then decided to go to Victoria Station to wait for her there. When she didn’t turn up, they called the police. A patrol unit that had her photo found her, tied to a tree in St. James’ Park with a rope around her chest and her legs.”

“She’s young for an Oxford undergrad.”

“Fast track. She graduated school at 16, then got a scholarship for Oxford College and went on to study Psychology.”

Luther took a long, measured breath. “What did they do to her?”

“They sliced open her abdomen and let her internal organs spill out while she was still conscious. She couldn’t have held out for long, but she basically watched herself bleed out. There’s so much blood and tissue on her hands that the pathologist thinks she may have… tried to stuff them back in.” Justin fought the wave of nausea that was rushing through him, focusing on John’s breathing instead, anchoring himself to him. Luther had closed his eyes, against the carnage, against the senseless killing, against the evidence littering the incident room. He stood unmoving within the rush and clatter, Ripley next to him holding on to the files in his hands.

Eventually, Luther opened his eyes again. “How many is that now?”

“Fifteen, boss. Fifteen murders in ten weeks.”

“Have they murdered this many people so closely together before?”

“No, the killings before were always at least three days apart.”

“Has Forensics come back with anything new about Sean Leung?”

“Not much, just that… hang on.” Ripley retrieved the file from his desk. “They’re sure that where he was found was also where he was killed. The amount of blood found at the scene matches the amount that he lost.”

“Skid marks?”

“The body must have been carried, not dragged. No boot prints, though, and no wheel marks in the immediate vicinity,” Ripley added, anticipating Luther’s next question. The DCI nodded, his hand briefly touching Justin’s elbow as he passed him on the way to his desk.

“Tell SOCO to revisit that crime scene, look for vehicle marks that could belong to a rickshaw. They probably parked in the area, then carried Sean to where we found him… he was definitely unconscious, then.”

“Are we really sure about the rickshaw thing? Not that I’m knocking Benny’s hunch, but...”

“I know, but let’s go with it for now, it’s the only scrap of a lead we do have. These victims were all killed where they were found, right?”

“Judging by the amount of blood, yeah, they were.”

“So we know that the rickshaw isn’t only used to transport bodies, but maybe to get the killers where they need to be in the first place. That could be something, especially with these killings tonight so close together.”

“Do you think these were all committed by the same person?”

“Nah. They switched riders before, didn’t they?”

Justin nodded, then stepped to the side and grabbed the phone on his desk to make the call to SOCO.

“Right,” Luther muttered to himself while Ripley was otherwise occupied. “What else do we have?” He stood before the murder boards, lightly knocking his fists together, rubbing the knuckles, in front of his chest, his upper body curled in on itself as if waiting to pounce.

*

Two hours later, they were still at the station, trying to establish a profile based on what they had seen at the restaurant the night before. The man Luther had noticed and indicated to Ripley as someone who could possibly be in charge of Cipher was turning out to be a mnemonic nightmare: they both had the feeling of having seen him somewhere before, but could, for the lives of them, not place him. Luther suggested sitting with a sketch artist, Ripley offered to skip down into archives and request case files from three years back and further.

“If we know him, he’s got to be in there somewhere.”

“Unless we’re getting him confused with a local celebrity we’ve seen on the cover of metro once too often.”

“What made you consider him in the first place, then? Even assuming that the Riva was the right place to look —”

“It was the right place to look.”

“It was a minute detail in Shand’s testimony.”

“A detail that was out of place and that you didn’t miss.”

“It could’ve been just a coincidence. He could have heard someone talking about it and thrown it in. Or he could have been misleading us.”

“It might have been a lucky coincidence that he mentioned it, but it wasn’t a coincidence that he thought of it. The mind is associative, a miserable liar like Graham Shand can’t hide that forever. No, you were on the right track there.”

“Then what?”

“Boss?” Detective Constable Marsden stepped up to their desks, holding a sheaf of files.

“What is it?”

“This just came in from Forensics, they’ve finally been through everything the letter had to tell them.” She handed the file to Luther, who passed it on to Ripley, then signalled for the DC to go on.

“Give me the rundown.”

“First off, no fingerprints, no DNA. Bottom line is: the paper is office store quality, the normal stuff everyone uses, no distinguishing features. Since the letter was typed, not printed, there’s no digital trace to follow. They’ve narrowed the brand of typewriter down to an old Olympia from the 1950s. We’re gonna try and source the specific model, but it’s more likely that it’s been bought at a jumble sale for 20 quid. Still, places to hit are auctions, Internet sales, antique stores. The ink that was used is authentic ink from back in the day, still on the original spools. We might have better luck sourcing those, unless they were part of nan’s last will at the flea market. Impression of the ink into the paper suggests that it was written by someone who’s not familiar with writing on typewriters or any kind of keyboard, there was no real flow. That’s it. They might be able to tell us more if more letters come in, but so far it’s pretty thin.”

“Good work, keep on it. See who we can spare, head up a team to pursue whatever lead you get. You know what to look for.”

“Alright, guv.” Marsden excused herself with a smile and a nod. Luther rubbed his forehead with his right hand, his left tapping a pencil against the stack of paper already on his desk, then throwing it down.

“We need another letter.”

“We need fewer bodies and a better look at this guy,” Ripley countered. “What made you consider him?” he returned to his earlier question.

“I just had a feeling of knowing him from somewhere. There was something about him...”

“Do you think the people he was meeting are involved as well?”

“Nah, they wouldn’t be meeting in public, not like that, they don’t have a club house. It’s just him. Or maybe I don’t know him, maybe I just know his type.”

“And what type’s that?”

“The type who doesn’t see people, only body parts. It was less pronounced with the people he was meeting, but on his way into the restaurant, he was… dissecting everyone he laid eyes on.”

“He could be a taxidermist,” Justin shot back before he could stop himself. Luther gave him a shrewd look, of the kind that made Ripley want to duck his head before staring back in mock-defiance instead. Luther leaned forward on his desk, picking up a pen and twirling it between his fingers lazily, never breaking eye contact.

“Riddle me this, Mr Ripley,” he drawled as Justin shifted in his seat, “who else dissects people for a living?”

“Pathologists. Which could explain where you’ve seen him before.”

“But...”

“But…,” Ripley echoed, narrowing his eyes at Luther. “But… pathologists aren’t the only ones who practise on corpses. Surgeons, too.” Luther nodded and leaned back in his chair. Ripley felt some of the tension slip out of his shoulders, then pushed himself to focus. “Do you think we’ve got ourselves another Frankenstein?”

The DCI shook his head. “Not a Frankenstein. A Dr Moreau. But I don’t know which of the two I like less.”

“So he’s the one who’s been taking trophies? Or had others take them?”

“Possibly.” Luther slumped into his chair a little, then drew himself up and arched his back, stretching, his broad chest straining against the buttons on his shirt. Ripley averted his eyes and scanned the murder boards again, almost idly. Anything but—

“Justin.”

His eyes snapped back to Luther.

“What?”

“The Riva is upscale, and surgeons are more likely to have a high profile. Look for doctors, surgeons in particular, who’ve made the media lately, any sort of controversy. If this guy is our Dr Moreau, he’s gonna be in some kind of trouble.”

Justin nodded slowly, already pulling his keyboard towards him. His fingers hovered above the keys, but he hesitated. Lifting his head again, he found John watching him. “Do you think someone was listening in on us last night?”

“Not so much that… but if he knows who we are, I bet you he was asking a couple of questions after we left.”

Ripley nodded again and was about to start typing when Schenk suddenly appeared next to their desks.

“Gentlemen, come with me.”

Luther and Ripley exchanged a look before pushing their chairs back to stand up and grab their suit jackets.

“What is it, Martin?”

“The Assistant Chief Constable wants to see us.”

“Oh, joy.”

*

“With respect, ma’am—”

“Not another word, Sergeant Ripley. I’m well aware of your _inclinations_ to protect DCI Luther from what’s rightfully coming to him, so I suggest you hold your peace just this once.”

Luther felt Ripley brim with fury next to him, and his own eyes narrowed at their superior officer at that remark. It was Schenk who spoke, however.

“Sergeant Ripley and Chief Inspector Luther are part of my unit, ma’am, and you are toeing a line I’d rather you didn’t cross.”

“I will toe all the lines I damn well please, Martin,” she shot back, turning her gaze away from Luther and Ripley to glare at him. “I will keep my house in order the same way you would in my position, the way you’re obviously not doing it now.”

“Then what do you suggest I do to amend that?”

“Do not let these two speak to the press again until this case is over and done with.” Addressing the two men in question, she gave them a clear look of warning. “Any more incidents caused by either of you during this investigation and you’ve got suspension waiting for you. Now get out of my sight.”

They gladly obeyed.

“I’m going back to the station. You two… get some air,” Schenk instructed them as soon as they were out in the main hallway. Luther steered Justin right when Schenk took off to the left on the sidewalk outside the building.

“C’mon.”

They’d made it three blocks away before Justin couldn’t hold it in anymore.

“When she said ‘inclinations,’ she meant homosexual inclinations,” he hissed, his accent thickened in his anger. Luther kept his eyes on the pavement under his feet and stayed quiet. “I know they all think I’m your puppy and that that’s clouding my judgement where you’re concerned, but to pretend that we live in an age where accusing someone of being gay is actually still an effective insult —”

Luther stopped dead in his tracks, his head whipping up. “That’s what you’re angry about?”

Justin stopped as well and blinked up at him. “I don’t care what anyone thinks about my sexual preferences, what I care about is that they think you’re taking advantage of me and that I’m blindly letting you. That was the subtext here, anyway.”

John leaned his head back in his neck and stared skywards for a few seconds, letting out a deep breath. When he looked back at Justin, he drilled into him with his eyes.

“Justin, anything happens on this case, it’s my responsibility. I’m leaving soon, she can suspend me all she likes. Got it?” He turned to walk on, but Justin caught his arm.

“I know what you’re thinking, and it’s not happening. You’re gonna do stuff and you’re not going to tell me about it, again. You promised, John. Don’t shut me out now.”

‘Stop making promises you can’t keep,’ Zoe’s words echoed through John’s mind.

“I can’t put you in danger, Justin,” he said.

“Then we’ll do this one by the book.”

It wasn’t until moments later that they both noticed that Justin was still holding on to his arm.

*

As they got back to the station an hour later, Benny was waiting for them with a surprise.

 


	5. Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What do you think Cipher’s going to do?” Justin asked Luther as they went to sit at their desks.
> 
> “I don’t think they’re going to do anything for a while.” He had a somewhat smug air about him, and Ripley blinked.
> 
> “The letter said they’d teach us a lesson.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, I know it's been ages, I'm so sorry! Late summer was all job hunting, and then I started my first proper, actually paying job in November, and my life's been a veritable nuthouse ever since. But I'm happy, yay!  
> I had this chapter in the pipes for ages, just couldn't find the right way to tie it together, but now here we are. I'm hoping I'll be able to bring you the resolution soon!  
> Thank you all for sticking with this story so far! xxx

“How much trouble are we in?” Luther asked Schenk, who’d stepped over to them from Benny’s desk.

“The Assistant Chief Con isn’t happy, as you can well imagine.”

Luther nodded. He stuck his hands into his trouser pockets and started pacing, like a panther in a box just two by three feet, moving between Justin and the edge of the nearest desk.

“We knew that doing something like this bears the risk of escalation.”

“Yes, we did.”

“How bad can it get?” Schenk tilted his head, pursing his lips. Waiting for an answer. Luther continued pacing.

“Pretty bad.” A beat. “Benny, what about that rickshaw?”

“How did you know?”

“You’ve got that look in your eye. Out with it.”

* * *

“What do you think Cipher’s going to do?” Justin asked Luther as they went to sit at their desks.

“I don’t think they’re going to do anything for a while.” He had a somewhat smug air about him, and Ripley blinked.

“The letter said they’d teach us a lesson.”

“Whoever is behind us wants us to think that, be hypervigilant, perhaps put resources out in the streets, especially after the four victims last night. But I think that they know exactly that sending a message is the thing that will create patterns, something for us to recognise. They’ve got to scramble the message first, so they’re stalled. If we’re lucky, we can get closer before they figure it out. Besides, we’ve been working this entire thing backwards.”

Justin looked up from his monitor. “What d’you mean?”

“We’ve been going backwards, from the victims and the crime scenes and the MOs, trying to build a profile as best we could. Except you can’t build a single profile of a group of people. Apart from our hunch that the man we saw might be some sort of leader, how is it possible that a band of psychopath starts working together like this? At the same time, they’re not even pretending to have one homogenous goal, killing people in the most twisted ways notwithstanding. It’s like they’re just providing each other with resources. They’re not like the twins.”

“So?” Ripley pushed the keyboard aside and rested his forearms on the desk.

“Where do serial killers meet?”

“In prison, in psychiatric wards… online talkboards,” Ripley supplied. “The possibilities are endless, especially if it’s the latter. We can’t go requesting records of inmates and patients on a hunch that they might be involved. We can only work one angle at a time.”

Luther turned his eyes away from the endless row of whiteboards and stared at Ripley. “And what if their leader is someone with access to all of that?”

Ripley’s breath caught in his throat. “Dr Moreau...” he murmured quietly, his eyes not leaving John’s. “Could it be that easy? Find him, find the rest of them?”

“Have you caught sight of him yet?”

“There was no high-profile surgeon from or around London in the media for doing anything outrageous lately, at least none that matches his description. I’ve been trawling the gossip columns to see if I can find any photos taken of the guests at the Riva during the last few months, trying to find a name, but nothing. So next, I’m going to be looking at hospital and university websites here and abroad, international conferences, medical journals… If whatever he might have done has hit the media at all.”

“It’s got to. We were both thinking we’d seen him somewhere before, remember?”

“Well, yeah, but that doesn’t have to be in connection with anything scandalous.”

Luther sighed, but nodded. “So he could still be local?”

“Could be, yeah.”

“We should go sit with that sketch artist, get his description out to police stations and coppers on the beat.”

Justin nodded. “Do you want to go talk to the guy whose pedicab was stolen after the accident, or should I?”

“We’ll go together, I want him distracted so we can poke around a bit.”

“You think he’s got something to hide?” Ripley asked while he grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair and shrugged it on.

“No, but I think he knows something he doesn’t even know he knows. And what he doesn’t know he knows, he doesn’t know to tell us,” John replied, hint of a smile crinkling around his eyes.

Ripley stopped in his tracks and spoke very quietly, forcing Luther to stop as well to hear him. “Put three ‘knows’ in a row one more time and you can go there alone.”

“Ah, empty threats…,” the DCI murmured and resumed walking towards the door. Someone had once called him, “a big man with a big walk.” Justin watching him stride away and could not but agree. John Luther had a taste of Cipher, and now nothing would stop his momentum.

After a relatively lengthy session with the sketch artist, during which they couldn’t agree on the exact distance between the suspect’s eyes and the size of his earlobes, they drove to Hackney Central.

“Shop belongs to a man called Goran Ivanišević —”

“What, like the tennis player?”

“Yeah, like him. Came to London thirty years ago from Croatia, started as a taxi driver, later owned his own taxi company. Sold that, built up a shop repairing, selling, and renting pedicabs. Employs a few of his own drivers, but mostly he rents them out or sells them.”

“Let’s hope he’s got a good memory for faces.”

* * *

When they returned to the station, Schenk arrived from the other direction and they met at the door.

“What are you two looking so happy about?”

Luther rubbed his hands together. “We’ve got a lead.”

“Gentlemen, knock me over with a feather. In, in!”

In the bullpen, Luther called together the entire squad for a meeting around the evidence boards, Ripley standing at his side, scribbling the new information down.

“Thanks to the tireless work of Benny Deadhead, we now know that a shop downtown, selling and renting pedicabs, is missing the rickshaw that we’ve seen on CCTV after every single of the murders assigned to Cipher. I know it sounds ridiculous, but we have reason to believe that this is how they move the bodies, either from the scene of the murder to the discovery scene, or from other places. They also appear to be using the vehicle to get where they need to go in the first place.” Luther stepped to the side to direct everyone’s attention to the evidence surrounding the crime scene of Sean Leung. Ripley smoothly moved out of his way, resuming his scribbling from the other side, leaning over his shoulder every now and then to double-check information. “After a second sweep of the scene where Sean Leung was found, it turned out that there were tire tracks that fit the width of a rickshaw behind a warehouse less than a mile away. There were no usable boot prints close to the body because the wind disturbed the ground, but the wind shade of the warehouse, the tracks were still visible. Other tracks in that area show several cars and trucks, only the one rickshaw.

“The tech squad is now trying to match the drivers of the rickshaw to pedestrians caught on CCTV, but that’s going to take even more time, especially since we don’t have clear shots of their faces. In any case, it’s more than we had. The owner of the shop has cameras installed and has kept the footage of the theft, but that’s only going to help with general physique.

“We’re looking for a male, possibly C1, 5’10’’ to 6’, no distinctive clothing, photos are coming up. The rickshaw was stolen 6 months ago, Mr Ivanišević reported the theft and the burglary squad investigated, trying to recover the bike, but the searches didn’t turn up anything. Now it looks like we’ve got our eye right on it.”

A murmur and a ripple went through the group, and Ripley looked over his shoulder to see backs straighten and expressions perk up. He had to turn back towards the evidence board to hide his smile as he himself felt the impact of what Luther was telling them. They had a lead, they had evidence they could use. Finding a damn rickshaw in London was a long shot, but at least they had something to bet on.

“The shop owner said that the bike was back on his premises for repairs, and that it got taken from the workshop. The distinctive markings on the undercarriage and the axis can be traced back to an accident the original driver had shortly before. He’s getting interviewed, too, though it’s unlikely that he had anything to do with it.”

“Has anyone else working at the shop noticed anything out of the ordinary? Anyone lurking about, casing the place?” Schenk cut in.

Luther shook his head. “Nothing.”

“Did the burglary squad dig up any other CCTV footage from after the rickshaw was stolen from the workshop?”

“They did, but they could only track the thief’s progress about a mile Northwest until he disappeared off the beaten track. Whoever this is, they know the city like the back of their hand.”

“What about your other theory about Cipher?”

Justin had finished adding the newly collected notes to the evidence board and turned around. Luther gestured at him from the side, signalling for him to take over. He cleared his throat and consulted his notes. “Following the multiple mutilations of some of the victims found in the early hours of May 10 and several earlier victims that included not just disfigurations, but also missing organs of appendages, it’s possible that Cipher has an agenda beyond public terror.”

“So like the last one, Frankenstein?” DC Colton spoke up from where she was printing off the CCTV footage of the thief.

“Same concept, different expression of insanity. It looks more like we’ve got ourselves a Dr Moreau — dissecting people for the fun of it, but not to stitch the different parts together as something new, but to regraft them, mould them to his imagination, or to his opinion of what they are or should be. It’s like he’s experimenting.”

“How did you and DCI Luther come to that conclusion?” Schenk asked more for the edification of the remaining squad than his own, since they’d already run it past him.

“Following a slip-up from one of the possible sources, Graham Shand, DCI Luther and I went to scope out a restaurant downtown that Shand gave us reason to believe at least someone from the group regularly went to.”

“How would Shand know about that?”

“He was approached by a recent inmate calling himself ‘Deryl,’ who probably made the tiny mistake of running his mouth, bragging to get him to divulge his MO, blurting some actually valuable information. So, at the restaurant, we spotted someone who fit the bill.”

“It’s a hunch,” John cut in from Ripley’s right. Justin startled a little when he realised that Luther hadn’t moved from his spot close beside him, but hoped it wouldn’t show. “It’s gut instinct, but that guy was there, and he doesn’t just look at people, he slices right through them.”

“We both had the feeling that we knew him from somewhere, but initial research didn’t yield anything.” Justin moved from his spot to grab a stack of copies from his desk and handed them off to be distributed, but kept one to slap it on the evidence board with a magnet. “We sat with a sketch artist to get a likeness. This is the guy we’re looking for. Obviously, the picture has to stay with us, only to be shown to potential witnesses. Benny’s running facial recognition. The letter from Cipher that we got today wasn’t entirely reassuring, but we’re hoping it might keep them busy a bit, force them to regroup. If they start fighting amongst each other, it can only benefit us..”

“What’s the strategy once we put a name to him?” Schenk again.

“The theory is that, once we find him, we might find the rest of them. If he is a medical professional, my bet is he has access to all the information he needs to find new members of the club. Psychiatric wards, self-help groups, what if he recruits? It seems unlikely that two serial killers happen to stalk the same anonymous therapy session for victims, especially ‘cause there were no such links between any of the victims. The difficulty will be keeping tabs on him to see if he does have anything to do with it.”

“Did he pay attention to you at all, at the restaurant?”

Ripley looked to Luther, since he had sat with his back to the entrance. “He got a good look at the entire room when he came in, so he definitely saw us. Whether he made us, I don’t know.”

“Do you think he’d be inclined to play games? What about the people you said he was meeting with?”

“You’re thinking about Lucien Burgess.”

“Aren’t you?”

Ripley cast a sidelong look at Luther, barely able to hide his discomfort at the name. That case had been make or break, in more ways than one.

“If we find him, we can’t waltz up to him and tell him he’s under suspicion, or even go and try to get search warrants. If he knows us as well as I think he does, he’s just waiting to spring the same kind of media attention on us that Burgess did when we got on his trail again a few years ago.”

“Alright,” Schenk broke through his thoughts. “Let’s wrap this up here. We’ve got work to do, finally. Let’s get it done before Cipher murders half the city trying to teach us a lesson in modern art.”

* * *

 

It had long since turned dark outside by the time they staggered down the stairs and into the open air. Justin took one deep, heaving breath. In mid-May, the night air was still crystalline and chilled, but he could smell the tendrils of summer the sprouting leaves were sending into the atmosphere around them. Next to him, Luther stood tall and looking at nothing in particular, right up until he chose, in his wisdom, to turn and watch Ripley instead.

“Feel better?”

Justin just hummed in response. He looked up at the sky. It was a clear night, and stars were busy twinkling up ahead. He’d never been one for star-gazing, really, but right now, with John Luther at his side and a means of getting their hands on whoever that bloody Cipher was shaping up in the distance, any Northern scoff at the idea died in his throat. He let his eyes roam over the unfamiliar constellations, very well aware that he’d barely be able to properly identify anything beyond the Great Wagon, but enjoying it nonetheless, imagining shapes and stories where there were none. He briefly wondered if John knew them any better than he did. Probably, with that huge philosophical brain of his — and Alice Morgan for a best friend, who’d bloody well got a doctorate in, well, stars and black holes and that.

“Come on,” he heard John grumble beside him, and Justin fancied he could hear the smile in his voice. He looked to the side, still up, and found Luther watching him.

“Where to?”

“Yours.”

“Why? Jenny still miffed at us for wanting to help her move?” He’d only meant to tease, but for some reason, the mention of Jenny made Luther squint, if only just a second.

“Not sure that’s what she’s miffed at us for,” he replied at last, smiling a crooked smile at Ripley, who knew better than to ask.

At Justin's flat, John took off his coat and held it at arm's length.

"What?"

"Just thought I should get it to the cleaners one of these days. Not sure how old some of those stains are."

Justin always preferred not to take too close a look at coppers' clothes, generally. They all carried their cases home with them, one way or another. "What is it about this one, anyway?"

John looked almost offended. "It's my lucky coat!"

"Lucky coat?" Justin raised his brows at him and stepped over from where he'd been checking his landline for unanswered calls. "You mean the coat you nearly got shot in? The coat you were wearing when you were willing to light yourself on fire? The coat you were wearing when someone drove a _nail_ through your hand?" Ripley swallowed and forced himself to step back a little, his voice gone a little more intense than he'd strictly planned.

Luther, on the other hand, didn't look fazed. "You mean the coat I was wearing when you called me from a stranger's phone to tell me you'd escaped Cameron Pell? The coat I was wearing when I got to bring you back into this unit, where you belong? You mean the coat I was wearing when I _met_ you?" Ripley's stomach did a somersault when Luther closed the gap between them, his shoulders hunched so he could look him in the eye more easily. "You mean that coat, Mr Ripley?"

Justin merely nodded.

"Hmm. 'cause I do consider myself lucky." And with that, John Luther leaned forward to land a simple, featherlight kiss on Justin's cheek, the tip of his nose brushing the hair at his temple, his lips soft in stark contrast with his beard. "Very lucky indeed," John murmured against Justin's skin, the coat forgotten in John's hands between them.

 


	6. Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Justin stood stock still, holding his breath, his skin tingling with the reminder of John’s lips against his cheek. Very slowly, John pulled back, watching him, his eyes warm and his smile hesitant but unrepentant.
> 
> “John?” was all Ripley could say, his heart in his throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're getting closer. You'll note the borrowed story line from S3 -- I wanted to get Erin back in, and get a chance to play out my Fix It "Luther knew all along and they conned them together instead of going through all that heartbreak for two episodes."

Justin stood stock still, holding his breath, his skin tingling with the reminder of John’s lips against his cheek. Very slowly, John pulled back, watching him, his eyes warm and his smile hesitant but unrepentant.

“John?” was all Ripley could say, his heart in his throat.

“Hello.” Quiet, teasing. Justin tilted his head and John frowned a little. “What?”

“It’s just… whenever a case takes you like this one, you’re so far away. Most of the time, that’s because there are things going on you can’t tell me about, but there’s always the case at the heart of it. When we got the Cipher case three weeks ago, I knew it’d be a long time before I got to see you again. I know what it’s like, I’ve known for five years, I know you. But it’s like you’re in orbit around me, and no matter how strong the pull is, I know I can never reach you, not all the way, not while you’re on a case. And now… you’re here.”

“I’m here,” John echoed, nodding slowly, his smile turning that bit sad and wistful that told Justin he was thinking about Zoe. “This morning, Jenny told me that I’m an idiot. And then, we got a lead, and a suspect, and I just want to be here.”

Justin felt himself shiver under the intense gaze John gave him, searching and reassuring all at once. He nodded, smiling, and the tension bled out of the other man’s broad frame. Still smiling, Justin took John’s coat from his hands.

“C’mon. Killer to catch in the morning.”

Together, they walked to Justin’s bedroom, where they undressed and got under the covers, unhurried. Justin moved into the circle of John’s arms without hesitation now, and didn’t hold back a contented sigh when they embraced him tightly. His eyes already slipping closed from exhaustion, he stretched up and pressed his lips to John’s jaw, just for a moment, then lay back down, anchoring John to him the same way he had the night before.

Luther lay awake, listening as Justin’s breathing evened out and his limbs grew heavy with sleep. He leaned his head on Ripley’s shoulder and watched his chest rise and fall with each breath he took. He hadn’t planned on kissing Justin, even just on the cheek, hadn’t planned on saying any of the things he’d said after closing the door behind himself. He’d woken up that morning fully convinced that he would stop this before it went too far. But then, this was Justin Ripley, who had a habit of tearing surprises out of him with alarming serenity. And John Luther was a man who that day had been handed the keys to the kingdom: a lead in the Cipher case, a suspect, and the means to break his last case. He was going to leave this part of his life behind, felt ready to now. And as he’d stood beside Ripley, the lights of the station casting their shadows long and dark, he’d known that, for as long as he could stay right there, he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to let go.

He was a selfish man. A man who was falling in love, mind and body, falling in love with his best friend. His partner, his mind supplied, but he shook the thought. They wouldn’t be working together for much longer anymore, now, and he was tired of that line in the sand between them. It had never really mattered, anyway. He’d used to think that the only time he’d ever pulled rank on Justin had been the afternoon on that damned Lucien Burgess’s boat, but that hadn’t really been it. He hadn’t ordered him, hadn’t yelled at him the way he had at Erin when Cameron Pell had called and they’d all heard Justin’s screams, his anguish, and his pain. He hadn’t ordered him more than he’d implored him to see his side, to do the _right_ thing. From the moment they’d been in Alice’s parents’ house, since the moment he’d said that bit about separate bedrooms making for a happy marriage, John Luther had wanted Justin Ripley with him, and nowhere else.

Erin would have accused him of picking Justin because he’d seemed starstruck and gullible. In fact, she had, and she wasn’t the only one. The truth was, the trust between Luther and Ripley had grown fast and strong in the early days, and then he’d nearly gone and destroyed it over the broken body of a woman stuffed into a freezer. He’d nearly destroyed Justin’s career, too, and he thought every day of how Erin had told him that Justin Ripley, to other coppers, was tainted because of his loyalty to him. He remembered every day the look on Justin’s face as he pushed the sniper aside and yelled his name, yelled for him to run.

But now, Justin’s prospects were good — he’d proved his mettle over and over, and Luther would throw every bit of his weight around, would leverage the promise of himself leaving for Justin’s promotion with the brass; and he knew Schenk would be willing to fight just as dirty for Ripley as he had to get Luther back into the fold.

If he wanted it, Justin could make DI in six months, and DCI in two years, could head up his own unit, could do the job and not break apart. And Luther hoped he would be beside him, in every way — just not in the bullpen of a police station, not inside their unmarked car, not inside an interrogation room, or a mortuary. But here, in his bed, his arms, his living, breathing warmth.

* * *

The next morning, Justin woke Luther by nuzzling his nose into his chest, his hair tickling the taller man’s neck. Luther trapped Ripley’s legs between his for a moment, tightening the hold of his arms, and breathed, just breathed. Keeping them, keeping the world still for just a few seconds, inhaling deeply, feeling the warmth expanding in his lungs. Justin’s hand settled on his hip, grounding him and lifting him up all the same.

The next morning, they brushed their teeth standing side by side in Justin’s bathroom, eyes meeting in the bathroom mirror. Luther thought about kissing Ripley properly, then, now, tomorrow. Ripley thought about Luther’s lips warm on his skin, thought about that warmth parting against his mouth. Both decided it would happen when it did.

The next morning, they left Ripley’s flat knowing they would catch a killer.

Justin was about to turn the key in the ignition when his phone rang. He sighed and fished it out of his pocket, casting a look at Luther, who raised his eyebrows. Checking the screen, he saw a number he didn’t recognise and frowned.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Sergeant Ripley.”

Ah, but he recognised that voice.

“Erin. What can I do for you?” Beside him, Luther went very still.

“I think we should meet.”

“Do you?”

“How about this afternoon, 3 o’clock, at the café a couple of streets down from the station.”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Depends. Do you want to talk, or do you want to be questioned?”

“Questioned? By who? By you? Don’t think that’ll scare me.”

“Want to bet your career on that?”

“Why so heavy-handed, Erin?”

“You just refuse to see it, don’t you? Do you honestly want to keep ignoring how close your great loyalty to him has driven you to the brink?”

“Can we stop with the rhetorical questions you don’t want an answer to now, I’ve got a case to solve.”

“Then go on, solve it. But you’ve got to come down and talk first. 3 o’clock. Don’t be late.”

Ripley hung up, put his phone back in his pocket. Turned the key in the ignition, then turned to meet Luther’s eyes.

“It’s not going to be fun,” he said.

“No. No, it’s not.”

* * *

At the station, they were greeted with a manic Benny Deadhead.

“We’ve found him. We know who you’re looking for.”

“Give me a name,” Luther ordered, throwing his coat down on his desk, Justin not even bothering to take his off, both following Benny back to his desk.

“His name is Richard Stoker, 54, renowned surgeon — well, used to be. He worked at a private clinic until ten years back, when his contract was suddenly terminated. That’s why you couldn’t find anything about dodgy surgeons in the archives, there is no archive. I had to do some serious digging, after the software recognised his face, to find out why the clinic chucked him out, it’s been buried deep to avoid the scandal. Still, the research papers he’d published up to that point are all available online and in medical journals.”

“And I’m guessing his research explains why he was fired?”

“Does indeed. It starts off as subtle, but over the years he published more and more controversial stuff about humans’ physiognomy reflecting their nature and bollocks like that. Hitting just the right spot for everyone still believing that disfigured or disabled people are less than human. Basically, he’s got it out for monsters, but it doesn’t stop there, he’s deep into psychology, too, especially the forensic kind. In one essay, he even suggests that known murderers or others violating moral or social conventions could be ‘made to look their nature,’ could be deliberately disfigured so their appearance would reflect what they did. He offers it as a sort of punishment for convicts, like a permanent alternative to life in prison or the death penalty. Let those people back out into society, but make it clear who they are by physically altering them so everyone would know who they were.”

“A panopticon of monsters, right among the people.”

“Exactly.”

“And what did the medical community make of that?”

“He wasn’t featured in any of the leading medical journals, and whenever his ideas were picked up anywhere, he was written off as seeking controversy for the sake of it.”

“Then how come he worked at some prestigious private clinic?” Ripley frowned at Benny.

“Family connections. Clinic belongs to a friend of his father’s, he’s actually decent surgeon with steady hands, so he gets the job. Made good money, too.”

“Then what was the scandal?”

“Apparently, one of his patients confessed to a crime while under the influence of morphine after an operation. It took him three days to make up his mind, but in the end Stoker went and, well. Slashed the man’s face open with a scalpel.”

“And none of that made the papers?” Justin asked, flabberghasted. “And, what, no police reports?”

“No, it was buried. The victim never pressed charges, the clinic floated a story about a doctor having a nervous breakdown and unintentionally harming a patient, which never made it to the news. I only know because, well. Their firewall isn’t as thick as they’d like to think.” Benny looked up at them with an innocent expression.

“Which means the hospital that hired him afterwards didn’t know, either?”

“Apparently, the clinic’s owners made him get counselling before letting him get out of his contract, so he couldn’t start looking for new work. My guess is that that’s where he got access to self-helf groups. Now that he’s working in a general hospital with psychiatric wards…”

“He recruited them.” Justin’s blood ran cold at the realisation.

“Nice and easy. Found one, found another, bound them to him one by one,” Luther continued his thought.

“He must have taken on an enormous risk introducing them to each other. He’s got to be a master manipulator, tying them to him like that. A group like that should fall apart after five minutes.”

“He commands great loyalty,” Luther murmured from the side. A shiver went up Ripley’s spine and settled at the base of his neck. He looked away from Luther and back at the screen.

“Now what?”

“Now we figure out how we get him.”

* * *

As Ripley walked into the coffee shop, he couldn’t quite believe he was doing this. He had a somewhat unwelcome flashback to eluding and evading Schenk back when he’d still been with Internal Affairs, back when Henry Madsen had awoken from his coma and all he’d said had been Luther’s name. They had found an unlikely ally in DSU Schenk — and they had lost one in Erin Gray the day Ripley had decided to tamper with the database in order to protect John.

Silently cursing himself, he slid into a booth opposite his former colleague.

“So. How’s life with the Judas division?”

“From zero to snide remarks in less than three seconds. Congratulations on the male posturing.”

“Why can’t you just let sleeping dogs lie, Erin? Look, I wanted — I want to make it right. But that’s not gonna happen by pursuing whatever witchhunt your lot have got in mind.”

“It’s not a witchhunt if we’ve got proof. We know things, Justin, and we’re gonna keep digging until we find more, until we know all of it. All the people that John Luther has hurt, all the things that got swept under the rug in the name of his so-called justice. And that interview yesterday was just the cherry on top. What do you think is going to happen when the bodies start piling up, when Cipher starts teaching John Luther, the entire Metropolitan police force, a lesson?”

“DCI Luther is doing the right thing.”

“No, Justin, he’s not, and you know it. I know that you know, but I also know that you don’t want to see it because of what’s going on between you two. He’s got you snared, Justin, but don’t believe for one second that he’s not gonna let you take the fall for him the way he let me. He won’t stop at you just because you’ve convinced yourself you’re in love with him, or because you’re sharing his bed.”

Justin clenched his fist just beneath the edge of the table. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Which one?”

“Any of it.”

“We know you spend nights together, Justin. We know that Luther is taking advantage of you to get you to do his dirty work. Cameron Pell was right, you know, you’re just his puppy.”

“Don’t say that man’s name like it means anything.”

“You’re not denying it?”

“Deny what? Do you wanna pretend you’re having us under surveillance? Do you expect me to be frightened, Erin?”

“God, you really sound just like him.”

“If you wanna suggest to anyone that there’s anything going on between me and DCI Luther, go right ahead. Partners — _friends_ — spending time off work together and crashing at each other’s flat after a late night, yeah, that’s really incriminating stuff. And just in case you’re wearing a wire right now, I might as well give you a hint of what I’m gonna be saying at any hearing you want to drag us off to: DCI John Luther is an extraordinary police officer. He’s a good man, and dedicated to the law. I’m honoured to have worked with him, and proud to stand with him.”

“You once pushed a sniper out of the way, even though you knew what Luther was going to do was to pull a knife on his best friend.”

“The same best friend who killed his wife and then framed him for it to save his own skin,” Ripley snarled.

“The same best friend who’d been mopping up Luther’s messes for years before finally cracking,” Erin shot back, determination blazing in her eyes. “How long do you think you can keep this going? Lying to everyone around you, lying to yourself? Give it up now, Justin, and you might still have a career to speak of when this is over.”

“Leave us alone, Erin. Just leave bloody well alone.” Ripley suddenly felt so tired of this fight between them. “I’m serious when I said I wanna make it right. But I won’t keep secrets from him.”

“You mean you’ll tell him that you met with me?”

“Why, you wanna drop off photos of us sitting here in his mailbox?”

“You’re getting paranoid.”

“You’re getting close to setting something in motion you can’t control. Bring forward charges like this against someone like DCI Luther — you’ll lose, Erin. Either that, or you go down with him. And when you do, it’s your career you should be worried about.”

“Are you threatening me, Sergeant?”

“I’m telling you what he would tell you, except I’m nicer about it, and less tall.” With that, he stood. “He already knows. I’ll tell him you said hello.”

Justin’s steps back to the car were weary.

 


	7. Seven, Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Justin got into the car and, for a few minutes, just sat. He watched Erin leave the café and cross the road towards her own car, watched her pull away. There was no-one in the car waiting for her, but Justin knew that there had to be someone pulling the strings in the background. Erin hated Luther, and by extension Justin, for what they’d done to her, had done to her career, but there was sanction behind her words. Those were no empty threats — someone else was driving this, someone with a lot of pull. Someone who hated John Luther.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaaaaaah so, uh, hello! I've grappled with life, a metric ton of shit life throws at you, _and_ with how to bloody finish this story for about two years, and I'm finally getting somewhere.
> 
> My unending gratitude for all your encouragement, and your restraint viz. chasing me with pitchforks. It's not quite over yet, this chapter already ran a lot longer than I had planned, but I think it's working out the right way.
> 
> xoxo

Justin got into the car and, for a few minutes, just _sat_. He watched Erin leave the café and cross the road towards her own car, watched her pull away. There was no-one in the car waiting for her, but Justin knew that there had to be someone pulling the strings in the background. Erin hated Luther, and by extension Justin, for what they’d done to her, had done to her career, but there was sanction behind her words. Those were no empty threats — someone else was driving this, someone with a lot of pull. Someone who hated John Luther.

Whatever witch hunt was going on, they had to get out from under. Justin knew that he would be singled out as Luther’s weakness, that given time they would try to confront him with evidence of what happened to Jenny, how Luther had helped her get away; anything to try and shatter his faith in him. Would they consider that he already knew? Would they account for the fact that he knew, and that he was still by Luther’s side? Did they think him capable of being an accomplice in all this?

One day, ages ago, Luther had come back from visiting Alice in the psychiatric ward they’d put her into. Had settled into his chair, had sighed, and had told Justin that Alice Morgan thanked him. Thanked him for saving John’s life that day, thanked him for his loyalty. John had hesitated before continuing, but the next thing he’d said had Justin flummoxed even more than the first.

“She says she never should have mistaken a wolf for a puppy.”

When Ripley got back to the station, Luther was waiting for him, coordinating surveillance on Stoker from the incident room. Schenk was nowhere to be seen, and Justin didn’t know whether to be worried. Walking up to Luther, he recognised the manic energy in his movements, the muscles in his back like coiled springs. It was rubbing off on the others as well, there was a restlessness in the room that set Ripley’s teeth on edge. He fought it settling into his bones, knew the thrill of the chase would catch up to him soon enough; but something was unsettling him. Not Erin, but… something was wrong. Was about to go wrong. Justin shook his head, now was not the time to start dwelling on premonitions. Walking up to Luther, he caught the man’s gaze, and immediately his movements stilled. Luther stayed twisted in his seat, eyes fixed on Ripley, taking him in from head to toe; never stopping giving instructions to whoever was on the other end of the line. Justin came to a halt right in front of him, even sitting down Luther was about as tall as him and didn’t have to look up too far. He was probably standing too close, anyway, but didn’t step back even when Luther reached for him, lightly touched his elbow to acknowledge his presence. The next second, Luther gestured for him to wait, breaking eye contact only to refer to a sheet of scribbled notes on his desk.

“Yes, check the storage lot, too. But what’s important is that you do not let him out of your sight, don’t stretch your team too thin trying to search all his little hideouts. Yeah, that’s good. Keep me updated.” He hung up and swivelled back towards Justin. “What did she say?”

“They’re onto something,” Justin chose to summarise. “I don’t know what they’ve got, but it’s not just Erin coming back for a payday. I don’t know if it’s the whole division, but someone is backing her, there has to be.”

Luther… smiled. Smiled up at him, fond and proud and all kinds of _wrong_.

“That’s not the reaction I was expecting,” he blurted, caught off guard by Luther looking at him like that, _here_. Looking at him like that at all, still.

“I knew you’d work it out by yourself,” was all Luther said by way of explanation, obviously enjoying the way Ripley’s frown deepened.

“What do you know?” Justin demanded, stepping an involuntary inch closer, tilting his head down towards John. Forgetting where they were.

“I talked to Schenk, Schenk talked to a few old contacts. You’re right, it’s not just Erin. It’s Stark.”

“Stark?”

“George Stark, DSU, professional witch finder. They fear him more than they need him, now, which is why he retired three years ago. Spent his life rooting out dirty coppers, earned him the title ‘Grand Inquisitor.’ Spent his life ruining others’, too, some of whom were innocent. But once Stark gets his teeth into you, he doesn’t stop.”

“If he’s retired, why is he backing Erin?”

“They brought him back. She’s been insistent enough, and persistently good enough at her job, that they’ve given her Stark. No-one else in the division wants to touch my case after Schenk couldn’t get me over Madsen. Stark’s been smelling blood, and he couldn’t wait to get back in for one last hunt.”

“So she’s not acting on her own. This is sanctioned.”

“Yes.”

Justin leaned heavily against Luther’s desk. “We have to close this case.”

“Which is where we’re going now.”

On the way to the car, Luther brought Justin up to speed on what he’d missed the mere hour he’d been gone. “We’ve got no location on him right now, but there are teams checking any place he could be.”

They didn’t want to spook Stoker by calling the hospital he worked at or by putting out traces on his phone, just in case anything alerted him to the fact that they were onto him. Ripley wasn’t sure whether having teams of coppers snooping around wasn’t going to tip him off even faster, but John knew to caution _tactical teams_ to be bloody invisible, or else. Justin only hoped they’d manage, this time.

They themselves were going to check out the hospital, since at this time of day it seemed the most reasonable place for Stoker to be, unless he’d drawn the short straw and got stuck with being on call during the night shift. Considering his senior position, however, those odds were slim. One after the other, the surveillance units had called in, slowly manifesting their hunch.

They parked a few streets away, walking the rest of the way. Luther was making long strides next to him, Ripley instinctively quickening his steps to match his speed. Tension was thrumming through him, and there was a tingle at the bottom of spine that got stronger the closer they came to their target. Now was the time when, in novels and on TV, people said they had a bad feeling about this. Ripley kept his mouth shut.

At reception, they couldn’t help but flash their badges to gain entry, but Ripley’s adamant instructions that she was not to alert anyone to them being there were taken seriously. The nurse nodded, visibly unsettled, and he thought they had it under control when she spoke, in a low voice. “I thought there might be more of you coming. The other two warned me not to say a word, too.”

Justin froze. Next to him, Luther stilled for just a moment, then leaned down on his elbows, bending his head towards her across the desk.

“They’re already here, are they?”

“Yeah, a woman and an older man.”

Luther nodded, tapped his flat palm against the desktop twice. “That’s good to know. Thanks,” he added as an afterthought, his eyes already searching out Ripley’s to signal him towards the stairs.

Together, they stepped away, and they were halfway up the stairs and well out of earshot when Luther cursed.

“Dammit.”

“Erin and Stark?”

“You bet.”

“How can they know?”

“Informant on the team? On one of the surveillance units? Or maybe they’re just listening in on our sodding frequency.”

They hurried up to the third floor where Stoker had his office.

“Question is, what are they doing here? Do they just wanna watch us arrest him? Use it against me?”

“Hope your hand slips?” Justin suggested, his elbow knocking against Luther’s in their haste to round a corner.

“Hope I let him go?” Luther muttered darkly. Ripley’s eyes snapped up to his face.

“Police cooperate with organised crime, not serial killers.”

“Want to bet your job on that?”

Justin nearly stopped in his tracks. “That’s what Erin asked me.”

When they turned into the corridor that led towards Stoker’s office, they heard raised voices from behind one of the doors. Two men were arguing, but it was hard to make out what was being said. Nodding at each other in silent agreement, they crept closer, their ears straining to pick out individual phrases. The further they went, the easier it was to distinguish the voices. One was smooth, with a clipped accent, the other rougher, deeper, with a strong Northern burr. Chancing a glance at Luther, Ripley received another nod.

“Stark,” Luther whispered. “And the other one…”

They’d arrived outside the door. The hallway was empty, and Luther threw a quick glance over his shoulder before checking the rather small sign on the wall. “It's Stoker,” Luther bit out.

Ripley swallowed. “What are they doing? Warning him?”

Luther gave no reply, but before he could move closer to the door to listen in, his eyes went wide and he made a grab for Ripley’s arm.

“C’mon, now.”

He dragged Justin away from the door, blindly trying the next and wrenching it open with so much force he nearly lost his grip on the handle. Bundling Ripley into the blessedly empty room before him, he stepped in and pulled the door to, but left a tiny gap for him to see through. Bewildered, Justin looked around. The room seemed to be a disused office, mostly used as a storage closet for old files and computer equipment, which explained why it was unlocked, at least; though not why the hospital appeared short on staff.

Voices filtered in from the hall. Justin sidled up to Luther, who was hiding around the doorjamb in case they were walking towards them.

“It’s only a matter of time before he’s coming,” they heard Stark say. “And when he does, you know what to do.”

The voice was moving away from them, so Justin leaned around Luther to peer into the hall. Stoker was clearly agitated, his hands shaking visibly. Stark… was alone, walking down the hall, away from their hiding spot. Stoker went back into his office, fairly slamming the door behind himself.

“Erin isn’t with him,” Justin murmured into the space between them. When Luther didn’t answer, he looked up to find him staring at him with intent, a dark expression in his eyes. Justin’s blood ran cold. Luther made to brush past him, but he held him back with a hand on his wrist. Luther stopped immediately, but bowed his head, avoiding Ripley’s eyes. “What,” Justin demanded, keeping his voice as low as he could. “Stark’s willing to let him get away to get one over on you?” Justin asked incredulously.

“Pretty sure we know who Stark thinks is the bigger monster here.”

For a moment, Justin just stared. Then, he shook his head, determined. John listed towards him for a moment, his shoulders slumping, he was drawing in on himself. Justin stayed where he was, didn’t move back but didn’t lean closer either, knowing Luther wouldn’t accept the comfort in that gesture.

“If Erin wasn’t with Stark, where is she? And where did they get his name?“

Ripley shrugged. “Through one of the surveillance units. It’s easy enough for him to listen in on our frequencies, and even if not, one of them probably owes him a favour.“ He paused. “So let’s go arrest him.”

Luther straightened his back. “Not here.”

“What? He’s right under our noses.”

“Exactly. He’s just had a visit from Stark, he’s rattled. I wanna see where he goes.”

Justin had to physically restrain himself from turning away and groaning in frustration — an impulse he’d thought he’d mastered somewhere between his second guv and his thankless extended stint in uniform. Instead, he stayed rooted to the spot, returning Luther’s intense gaze.

“Fine,” he gritted. “But at the first sign of him contacting or meeting up with one of his _puppets_ , we’re bringing him in.”

Luther nodded at him, and Justin stepped back.

“Call Erin.”

He looked up sharply. “Now? And stay here?”

“Yeah. Let’s gauge where she is. We don’t know if Stark is roaming the halls, waiting for us, and from here we can keep an eye on Stoker.”

“Alright.” Ripley dug his mobile out of his coat pocket and scrolled through his call log to find the previously unknown number. Casting one more glance at Luther standing uncharacteristically still next to him, he tapped the screen to call. Pressing his phone to his ear, he was relieved not to be met with a busy signal. Luther still didn’t move. He’d been letting it ring for nearly a minute when Erin picked up. “Sergeant Ripley,” she greeted him. Apart from her voice, there was silence on her end of the line. No ambient noise, no other voices. Judging by the time it’d taken her to answer, she hadn’t been all that close to an empty room.

“Erin,” he answered, his eyes flickering over to Luther, who was watching him like a hawk. “I thought about what you said.”

“Did you?” Justin quickly curled one finger around to the side of his phone to adjust the volume. Over the line, he heard Erin take a few steps, the heels of her shoes clacking sharply against the floor. The sound seemed to carry. No carpeting, then, and most likely a room containing little furniture to absorb the noise.

“Look, we’re gonna wrap up this case, we’re this close to making an arrest,” Justin replied. Erin was still pacing back and forth. “We’re at the hospital where the suspect works.”

Erin stopped moving. “So soon?“

“We caught a break. Well, Benny caught us one.” Ripley raised his eyebrows at Luther, who nodded and motioned for him to go ahead, chase the lead. “I thought you’d have already known that, keeping such a close eye on us.”

“I didn’t exactly bug the incident room, Justin.”

“You might as well have.” Justin bit his lip, then decided to go all in. “After all, you seem to be the only one who doesn’t know.”

“What are you implying?”

“I’m not implying anything. I’m telling you that Stark got here before us. And he didn’t arrest him.”

Next to him, Luther held his breath.

When Erin didn’t answer, didn’t audibly move, Justin pressed on. “Where did he send you, Erin? Where did he tell you was going? If you think Stark is doing this with the same principles as you are, you’re lying to yourself.”

“Don’t you dare talk to me about principles, Justin.” Erin’s voice was quiet but full of contempt, and Justin accepted that for the truth it was.

“The rest is up to you,” he shrugged. “I just wanted you to know that.” Before Erin could answer, he hung up. At that moment, a door down the corridor opened. Luther stole a quick glance. Turning back, he whispered, “Stoker’s leaving.” They waited until the steps were drawing away, then Luther checked the hall before slipping out the door, signaling for him to follow. Together, they hurried down the stairs, hoping to outrun the elevator Stoker had to have taken.

Once they were back on the ground floor, Luther pulled Ripley into the corridor towards A&E. They’d made it just before the elevator doors opened, and so they watched as Stoker quickly spoke to the nurse at admittance, and then vanished out the front door. Luther and Ripley ran the other way and slipped out past mothers whose kids had pennies up their noses and what looked like a painful run-in between a man’s fingers and a big hammer; out into the ambulance bay. From there, they rounded the building and caught a glimpse of Stoker getting into his car.

“We’ve parked too bloody far away.”

“Not at all. There’s our lift.” Luther pointed at an unmarked car not far from Stoker’s. An occupied car.

“What the hell?“ Justin called even as he took off on Luther’s heels as Stoker pulled out of his parking space. Moments later, they’d reached the car. Luther wrenched the passenger door open and folded himself into the seat, Ripley hurried to get in the back.

“What the fuck?” the man in the driver’s seat echoed his query.

“Nice to meet you, Superintendent Stark. Now get going.”

Justin could only stare. Oh _shit_.

The motor already running, Stark quickly caught up with Stoker on the high street. Stark threw Luther dark looks from the side, but didn’t say a word.

“So you ditch Erin, and you warn Stoker that he’s about to be arrested. Then you follow him to cover your own ass, all the while hoping that he’ll lead you to me,” Luther drawled, sounding for all the world like he was talking about the weather. “What did you tell him to do that made him so angry?”

At that moment, Stoker, up ahead, took a left. Stark cursed under his breath. Luther nodded to himself. “Not going where you told him to, then.”

 


	8. Seven, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's not a gamble to know when someone's a better person than you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh god. Oh god, this is it. I finally finished it.
> 
> To everyone who's been waiting so patiently, and sending kind and encouraging comments -- THANK YOU. This one's for you, and I hope you'll love it.

Stark just about made the turn before the lights turned red, Luther's eyes now fixed on him. "Clever," Luther said, "taking one of your other sergeants with you to the hospital, throwing us off the scent. I bet you thought we'd turn around when we heard you and Erin were already here, wouldn't call her to tell you what you did."

Stark kept looking straight ahead now, refusing to acknowledge them, but Justin could see his knuckles turning white as he gripped the steering wheel tighter.

"But we did call her, and she knows you ditched her, knows you lied to her. So there's that." Luther still sounded almost bored, his eyes flicking over his shoulder to meet Ripley's. "What did you say to him?"

"Stop talking to me like I'm one of your fucking suspects," Stark growled. Luther said nothing. Ahead, Stoker took another left.

"Where don't you want him to go, George?" Luther asked, his voice soft in a way that Justin's come to associate with broken noses and stolen evidence. They kept driving.

A few minutes later, Ripley was busy marking down the route they were taking on his phone — knowing which routes Stoker took might help them identify certain patterns later. They'd moved from the confines of the City, leaving Westminster far behind, ending up in a run-down, industrial area similar to the one where Rose Teller had once brought him to offer DCI John Luther his job back.

"You wanted him to go home." Justin hadn't spoken since getting into the backseat at the hospital.  "You hoped, or knew, that we didn't have a warrant yet, so if he'd gone home… no evidence, no way of finding the secret hide-out. All we could have done was take him in for questioning." He didn't ask why. He thought of Henry Madsen hanging from a walkway in a place just like this. John didn't turn to look at him this time.

It was minutes before the area became so remote that Stoker couldn't help but be aware that he was being followed, but by now it was too late to turn around. Stark still kept his distance, not risking a confrontation out on the open road. Finally, Stoker pulled into the parking lot of an abandoned factory. They stopped in the street, watching as the surgeon leapt from the car and bolted towards the building. Luther's mouth was set in a grim line as he muscled his way out of the car, Ripley and Stark following behind. Luther and Ripley exchanged a glance, then Luther turned to Stark.

"Oh, I'm not staying out here," Stark snapped before Luther could say anything, then set off across the road.

They entered through the same door Stoker had taken. Luther had made a somewhat surprised noise when they found it unbarred, but barrelled on ahead of them. It was cold, it smelt of rust and chemicals. In the light coming in through the door, he could see that the walls were damp and moldy, the floor covered in dust and grime. Ripley pulled a flashlight from his coat pocket before he let the door thud shut behind him and clicked it on. He pointed it at the floor to keep the cone of light small and centred on them, making it easier to see if light was coming from up ahead once they moved deeper inside the building.

Luther was inspecting the floor, but as he'd feared, there were too many footsteps in the dust to make out which way Stoker had gone just now. But at least they could track the most common routes through the maze of corridors. He listened for any sounds, but the place was silent. Lifting his chin, he signalled Justin to follow him. He was aware of Stark giving an annoyed huff, but he paid him no heed.

They crept through the hallways, listening for noises and straining their eyes to detect any movement. Eventually, they spotted a sliver of light out from under a door that wouldn't quite close, the structure bent out of shape by the damp making its way through the walls. Taking a right, they snuck towards the door, able to make out the noises of someone moving around when they got closer.

_Nothing for it now_ , Luther's eyes on Justin seemed to say, gripping the door handle and taking a deep breath before hauling it open. He stepped through first, Ripley hot on his heels, Stark taking up the rear at a more leisurely pace. Blinking quickly to adjust to the bright light coming from several floodlights positioned in all corners of the room, Luther zeroed in on Stoker, who was standing near a couple of slabs, surgical equipment on trays next to each one. Taking in Stoker's face and stance, he was reminded not of a cornered animal, ready to strike. Instead, Stoker looked furious, and it wasn't to cover for his fear.

"You thought I would fall for that?" he shouted, and Luther found himself following his gaze towards Stark. "Go home, you said! Right into the waiting arms of the police, I bet, while you three come here and steal my work!" Luther was no stranger to deluded rantings from serial killers, but even he had to stop for a moment and marvel at the twisted logic.

"You led us here," he replied before Stark could get a chance to open his mouth. "You led us here, Richard. We'd have followed you anywhere, but you led us here." Stoker's eyes flickered towards him, but inevitably went back to Stark.

"You lied to me! You warned me he was coming, but he was already there! With you! You led him to me!" He was spitting with rage now, his hands balling into fists at his sides, unclenching, and then balling up again. Justin used his ranting as a distraction to slip out from behind Luther's back, inching sideways slowly. There were trays with scalpels and bone mallets to Stoker's either side, and Justin watched his twitching hands with growing unease. Luther, hyperaware of Ripley moving close to him, on his left, shifted minutely and Justin's gaze dropped to the DCI's right hand, mostly hidden behind his coat, motioning for him to go on, but carefully.

"He did lie to you," Luther replied, finally succeeding in pulling Stoker's focus to him with that. "What did he tell you to do, Richard? That's what he did, didn't he, told you I was coming, and he told you what to do. What does he want you to do?" Stoker said nothing, shaking his head. "You can't trust a word he says," Luther pressed. "Whatever he told you to do, it isn't going to help you. He was never going to help _you_." To his right, Justin took another cautious step. Luther moved forward to cover for the movement. "I'm going to put you away for what you did, Richard, make no mistake. But at least I'm honest about that. You always knew I was coming for you, from the moment you saw me on the news. You sent me that letter."

"He said—" Stoker started, but Stark interrupted him.

"Stow it, Stoker!" he bellowed.

"Shut up!" Luther seethed, briefly turning to Stark and pointing at his chest, as if pinning him in place with his index finger. "Shut up." He moved forward another inch. "Look at me Richard," he said as he turned his head, "look at me. What did he say?"

Stoker seemed dazed. "He said that, if I went home, you couldn't touch me. He said you'd have no warrant, no evidence. He said it would make you angry. He told me to make you angry."

The weight in Justin's stomach solidified. Luther just nodded. "Yeah, he would say that."

Stoker continued staring at Luther. "I know your history, Luther. I know about Alice Morgan, I know about the wife you killed."

"Ian Reed killed my wife," Luther replied, his voice deadly monotone. Justin forced himself to keep moving, away from John, when all he wanted was to guard his six.

"That's what you tell yourself, isn't it? Does it help you sleep at night?" Stoker's expression was turning now, into one of glee. "You killed your wife, Chief Inspector, just as you killed the dozens of people Cipher will deliver to your doorstep."

"Cipher is done, Stoker. You're done." "You will never find them all." Stoker actually _smirked_. "Never. Arrest me if you like, my work will be continued in my name."

"We know who your patients are. How long do you think it will take us to rustle them all up, and shake them until names fall out? Hm? There's nothing you can do now, Stoker. Nothing."

"And what happens if you don't, Luther? Will you come visit me? Put me in an interrogation room with the cameras turned off?" Luther advanced on him, in reach of the surgical tray to Stoker's left.

"I'll put you a hole, Stoker. And then I'll throw away the hole, and forget all about you. No-one will remember you, Stoker. You're nothing to the world."

Stoker tilted his head and lifted his hand, wagging his finger at Luther as if telling him off. "I know what you're trying to do, and I'm telling you, it won't work," he sing-songed. He backed up a step, and Ripley cursed mentally. If Stoker backed up further, he wouldn't be able to block the other surgical tray in time. He weighed up their odds. Luther refused to let himself look, but he was aware of Justin changing direction.

He was moving to the right now, his trajectory putting him… right in the middle, right where he always was: protecting John from the monsters that haunted him, from the monsters that he created. _By the book_ , Luther reminded himself. _You promised_.

"I'm not trying anything, _Dick_ ," Luther kept Stoker's attention on himself, and on himself only. The nickname-cum-insult was petty, a cheap shot he'd have otherwise reserved for the interrogation room perhaps; but it would work precisely because it was cheap. It was unworthy of Stoker's sense of self-importance, and Luther was fresh out of time as well as patience.

"You're filling my head with lies, John," Stoker admonished. "He did, and now you! You're trying to make _me_ angry! WHY? Why is everyone always trying to make. me. angry!"

Luther felt his control of the situation slipping away. "I'm telling you the truth. I know the truth can be scary, Richard, but you chose your own path. You chose to hurt innocent people. So now you must accept someone else choosing a different path for you."

"No. No, no," Ripley watched, helplessly, as Stoker backed up further, his right hand now reaching back, scrambling for one of the instruments blindly. "NO!" Stoker screamed, the tips of his fingers brushing a scalpel. "NO!" He had a good grip on the scalpel now, and lunged. His gaze fixed on Luther, he paid no attention to Ripley, who was actually closer. Stoker raised his right hand high above his head, throwing his body forward as though preparing to bring down the blade on Luther's face and throat.

Justin didn't think before he moved. As if in slow motion, he felt himself act before he'd fully decided on a course of action. Plowing into Stoker with his entire body weight, he tackled him before he could reach John, his arms going around Stoker's waist as he brought him down. Together, they stumbled into the second surgical tray, bone mallets and more scalpels clattering to the ground with them. Stoker landed hard on his back and so he just lay there for a few seconds, winded and gasping for air. Ripley righted himself, clambering to his knees. He was going for the hand still clutching the scalpel when Stoker realised his intention and jerked away. "No," he wheezed, slashing the air with the blade in an aborted movement. He missed, but Ripley reflexively reared back, which gave Stoker more room. Knowing that Stoker would hit his second wind soon, Ripley threw his weight forward, grabbing Stoker's wrist forcing his arm up and outwards.

Behind him, Luther jerked into action — but not fast enough. He had to watch as, with his left, Stoker scrambled for one of the fallen instruments and got hold of a set of straight surgical pliers. With a shout, Stoker grabbed the length of it and drove the tip into Ripley's shoulder. Justin screamed.

The next thirty seconds passed in a blur. Ripley hadn't relinquished his hold on the hand holding the scalpel, even though Stoker was trying to drive the pliers deeper into his flesh with the other. Luther, when he was finally close enough, kicked at Stoker's left elbow. Stoker cried out and let go so Luther could grab his arm and _yank_. It was Stoker's turn to scream as Luther nearly wrenched his shoulder out of its socket.

"Get off of him!" Luther barked at Ripley, who obeyed out of instinct more than awareness of what was going on, his vision narrowed to the pain piercing his right side. He still held on to Stoker's right arm, though, and as Luther grabbed Stoker by the neck from behind and forced him onto his front, Ripley kept pushing until he could twist Stoker's arm behind his back. The combined pain finally made Stoker relax his hand and the scalpel fell from his fingers. Luther brought the man's other arm around and, together, they had the therewithal to cuff his wrists.

"No! Noooo," Stoker sobbed, reduced to his anguish, writhing on the floor and fighting his bonds. The cuffs wouldn't break. Luther and Ripley just knelt on either side of him for a moment, panting. Finally, Luther looked up at Stark, who was hovering near the entrance, wide-eyed.

"Thanks for all the help," he ground out. Ripley huffed a laugh, but the movement brought pain lancing through his ribcage, and he gasped instead.

"Justin," Luther was beside him in an instant, his hands hovering over the pliers and Ripley's shoulder, desperately wanting to help but unsure how to without making it worse. "Justin," he repeated, now barely more than a whisper, the tips of his fingers brushing Ripley's neck. Ripley let himself list to the right until his forehead rested on Luther's bicep.

"I'll be alright," he murmured through the pain. "Just let the paramedics deal with it."

"It's gonna be a while until back-up gets here," Stark supplied helpfully.

"Shut your fucking—" Luther started, but Ripley's hand on his thigh, hidden from Stark's view by the bulk of his body, made him stop short.

"No, it's not," Ripley said. "Not long now."

As if on cue, they could hear sirens wailing, coming closer.

"Justin?" Luther asked quietly.

"Erin knows how to track a phone, you know," Ripley answered. He was leaning more heavily on Luther now, and he knew without looking down that there was blood seeping into both their coats. Luther bowed his head and only just stopped himself from nuzzling Ripley's hair.

"That's one hell of a gamble you took there."

"'s not a gamble to know when someone's a better person than us."

Before Luther could reply, a tactical unit busted down the door.

* * *

**Three months later.**

Justin closed the door behind himself and leaned against it for a moment. What a day. From the kitchen, he heard the telltale sounds of someone putting the kettle on, so he took off his new coat, put it on the rack next to a longer one. It was familiar, in cut and size, but new, too. Three months old, to be exact. After what had happened that day, they'd both needed a new lucky coat. No more bloodstains. No more fear. Today had been his day in court, in the trial against Richard Stoker. Evidence upon evidence, each piece in the crown's case more gruelling than the last. Schenk had prepared him for the testimony, John choosing to let their boss handle it, for once. Besides, Justin had made DI just two weeks ago. Luther had resigned that day.

Moving into the kitchen, Justin watched as John set up two mugs of tea, leaning against the counter. John stepped up to him and reached right past him for the sugar, the warmth of his body tantalizingly close.

"Hullo," John greeted him, still close, looking down at him with a smile in his eyes. Justin smiled back, but instead of responding he just put his hands on John's cheeks and guided him close enough to kiss him. John just about had the presence of mind to put the sugar down on the counter before wrapping his arms around Justin, pulling him flush against his body. Coaxing Justin's lips open with a flick of his tongue, John deepened their kiss, blood already rushing south when Justin moaned into his mouth. Behind them, the kettle beeped, and John would've gladly ignored it in favour of pinning Justin to the counter, but the man in question evidently had other ideas.

Gently breaking their kiss, Justin smiled up at him a little sheepishly. "You know I hate starting what I can't finish, but tea does sound good. And I need to get out of this suit," Justin murmured, pressing a small kiss against John's jaw.

"I know," John replied, his left hand briefly resting on Justin's right shoulder, but not long enough to bring out the glare Justin saved for when he decided John was _fussing_. "Go get cleaned up. I'll order dinner. Pizza?" 

Justin nodded. "Sounds good." John's hands dropped to his sides to let him go, but Justin reached out and twined their fingers together. "Sounds good," he repeated and kissed him again.


End file.
